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The Church and the 
Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

»EW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
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MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

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TORONTO 



The Church and the 
Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

(A discussion of the evolution of a righteous social 

order with special reference to the mission 

of the church in the process.) 



BY 

ELIJAH EVERETT KRESGE, Ph.D. 

Pastor of Dubbs Memorial Reformed Church, Allentown, Pennsylvania. 

Chairman of the Committee on Education of the Social Service 

Commission of the Reformed Church in the United 

States. Author of "Immanuel Kant's 

Doctrine of Teleology*' 



lI3eto gotfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1922 






Copyright. 1922, 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Set up and printed. Published, October, 1932 



PRINTED IN THB UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



OCT -4 '22 

.CI.A686074 



I 



^ To the memory of two American 

^ pioneers in the Gospel of the Kingdom: 

JOSIAH STRONG 
and 

WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH 



CONTENTS 



PAQR 

Introduction . . ix 



CHAPTER ONE 
The Nature of the Kingdom of God 1 



CHAPTER TWO 

The ReiiAtion of the Christian Church to the Kingdom 
OF God 31 



CHAPTER THREE 

The Church and the Extensive Growth of the King- 
dom — OR the Problems of Evangelization .... 93 



CHAPTER FOUR 

The Church and the Intensive Growth of the King- 
dom — OR THE Problems of Christianization . . . 171 



CHAPTER FIVE 

Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming . . . 283 



lE-TKODUCTION 

W£ are living in the morning twilight of a new 
age. There are indications of a change in the 
weather later in the day, although at this early 
hour the weather prophets cannot foretell with certainty 
how decided the change will be, or how soon it will come. 
Some things, however, are reasonably sure. There will 
be certain reconstructions in our social life — in govern- 
ment, in industry, in education, and in religion. And 
it is clear also that the reconstruction will proceed in ac- 
cordance with the principles of a social idealism which is 
reacting against the individualism of the old order. 

The Christian church should be one of the vital factors 
in the work of reconstruction. But if the church shall 
assume moral leadership in the new age there is need, 
first of all, of a reconstruction of her own program — of 
her theology and of her practice. The individualistic 
program of salvation which was worked out in the 
individualistic ages of the past, and to which the church 
has steadfastly adhered all through the centuries, cannot 
meet the requirements of the new age. That a social 
Gospel is demanded in our day is clear to any one who 
can read the signs of the times. 'No other Gospel will 
get and hold the ear of the age. But the only Scriptural 
basis from which the social Gospel can consistently be 
preached are the ideals and principles which cluster about 
the prophetic conception of the kingdom of God. There 
is no other Scriptural material that will give adequate 
support to the message which the church must deliver. 
But this is the material which has been most neglected in 
our study of the Scriptures ; and to this neglect, more than 

ix 



X Introduction 

to any other factor, must be attributed the social ineffic- 
iency of historical Christianity. 

The most urgent challenge, therefore, that comes to the 
church in this day of social rebuilding is the call for the 
program which is implied in the ideals and the motives 
which center in the Kingdom-conception of Jesus and the 
prophets. The church must rediscover the prophetic con- 
ception of the kingdom of God or fail in the mission that 
was entrusted to her. Her theology must be rethought 
and her mission restudied from the view-point of the 
righteous social order which is implied in the fundamen- 
tal principles of the kingdom of God. This book is but 
a feeble voice joining in the summons to the church to 
make the kingdom of God and its social implications the 
central or governing principle of her thought and her 
labors. 

In these discussions I shall endeavor to show the 
church's mission in the difficult task that has been en- 
trusted to her as the specially ordained servant of the 
kingdom of God. I shall frankly state the issues as I 
see them and understand them. I shall not hesitate 
to criticize the church where I feel convinced that she de- 
serves criticism. It may appear to some that I unduly 
criticize her for her failure to establish the kingdom of 
God ; that I fail to appreciate the difficulties that have be- 
set her in her labors; that I see only the duty that has 
been left undone. But this is not the case: I deeply 
appreciate the service which the church has rendered in 
an evil and unappreciative world ; and I am keenly aware 
of the difficulties that have beset her in her labors. But 
it is not my purpose to speak of these things, for they are 
matters of common knowledge. My purpose is to show: 
1, that the social conception of the kingdom of God — i.e., 
the idea of a world-order regenerated by justice and 
brotherly love — is fundamental in the religion of the 
great prophets and of Jesus of iJ^azareth; 2, how the 



Introduction xi 

church came to depart from this idea of the kingdom; 
3, that the weaknesses and failures of the church are 
largely due to this departure; and 4, that the salvation 
of the church as well as the salvation of society will de- 
pend upon her return to the ideals and purposes from 
which she has departed. 

The church's departure from that which was most 
fundamental in her Master was due to circumstances 
rather than to willful disloyalty. The church never meant 
to be disloyal or untrue to the will and purpose of her 
Lord. Least of all does the church of to-day mean to be 
disloyal. There is more of the spirit of the Master in 
the church to-day than at any other time of history. But 
our devotion to the church must not blind us to her short- 
comings. When the ostrich pokes his head into the sand 
he does not obliterate the things aroimd him; he merely 
deceives himself. 'Nov will the closing of our eyes and 
refusing to see change the facts of history. That the 
church has departed from the ideals and purposes that 
were most fundamental in the life and teachings of her 
Master is a plain fact of history. And that she has failed 
to adjust and to readjust her message and her ministry 
to the changes that have been wrought in the life of a 
growing world is also a plain fact of history. The church 
is face to face with the need of a radical readjustment 
right now. If she should fail to readjust herself to her 
changing environment, as she did in certain similar sit- 
uations in the past, the tragedy would be doubly sad. It 
would be a sad thing for the world, and sad for the church 
herself. 

It would be a sad thing for the world, for there is no 
other organization or agency that is in the least prepared 
to render the service which the church, as the special 
instrument of the kingdom of God, is supposed to render 
and is capable of rendering. Under the spell of tempor- 
ary insanity from which many were suffering during the 
war, some otherwise reasonable people prophesied that 



xii Introduction 

the church would speedily pass away, and that the Y. M. 
C. A., or the Red Cross Society, or some humane agency 
patterned after the war-service of these societies, would 
take her place. 'No one should be so ungrateful as to 
miminize the war-service of the Y. M. C. A., much less 
that of the Eed Cross Society. E'er should any one 
assume the role of a prophet who is so plainly lacking 
in common-sense judgment as to feel that the war-service 
which these organizations rendered, or that the service 
which they are at all prepared to render, could satisfy 
the religious or the social requirements of our age. What 
the world needs, and what it is unconsciously demanding, 
is the message and ministry which the prophetic concep- 
tion of the kingdom of God implies; and the Christian 
church is the only organization that is prepared with the 
traditions, and with the men and the machinery, to ren- 
der this service. !N'ot the passing away of the church, 
but her awakening to a sense of her full duty and oppor- 
tunity is the thing that we need and want. 

On the other hand, it would be a tragedy for the church 
herself if she could not be inspired to readjust herself to 
the demands which the new age is making upon her. 
It would not necessarily mean that the present organiza- 
tion would pass away, — at least not for a long time to 
come. The church, as she now is, would no doubt con- 
tinue to live, and would do much good. She would con- 
tinue to appeal to a certain class of people — to pious souls 
who are barren of the social passion. But if the church 
should fail to readjust herself to the new environ- 
ment; if she should fail to adapt her message and 
her ministry to the intellectual world that has come 
into existence since the days of Copernicus and Bruno, 
and to the still greater changes that are at this very 
hour being wrought in the political and industrial 
world, she would lose her power to appeal to the 
class of men and women who will shape the policy 



Introduction xiii 

and determine the destiny of the social order of the fu- 
ture. She would, for this reason, fail to be a vital factor 
in the social rebuilding of the new age. She would, for 
this reason, sacrifice her supreme opportunity to serye. 
And what kind of church would it be that appealed only 
to the type of men and women who take more interest in 
the golden streets of the 'New Jerusalem than in the un- 
sanitary streets of the city in which they and their neigh- 
bors are living? May God spare the world and the 
church from such a fate ! 

How will the church meet the crisis ? Will she give 
the kingdom of God the central place in her program? 
Will she make the ideals and purposes of the kingdom 
the governing idea in her message and her ministry? 
This is the paramount question. The real significance 
of everything that the church will attempt to do will de- 
pend upon whether or not the establishing of the kingdom 
of God is the controlling motive. The real significance 
of Missions — whether Home or Foreign Missions — de- 
pends upon the end or purpose that we have in view. 
If Foreign Missions merely mean the saving of the poor 
heathen from hell hereafter, they lose their primal sig- 
nificance. If Foreign Missions do not mean an effort to 
save the heathen from their social hell here on this earth ; 
and if Home Missions do not mean an effort to make life 
in all its departments and relationships livable for all the 
people, they lose their real significance. The prophetic 
doctrine of the kingdom of God, or the idea of a social 
order regenerated by justice and brotherly love, must be 
made the way of approach to all our problems — our in- 
dividual and our social problems, — the problems of evan- 
gelization and the problems of christianization. It is 
this conviction — a conviction that has grown with exper- 
ience and study — that has impelled me to give to the 
writing of this book the scattered moments which I could 
spare from my busy ministry, and no little physical en- 
ergy which I could ill afford to give. The many errors 



xiv Introduction 

and weaknesses are matters of the head and not of the 
heart; and I pray that the good God may overrule them 
all for the good of His kingdom, or the righteous social 
order. 

I wish to take this opportunity to express my indebted- 
ness and my gratitude to Professor George Albert Coe, of 
the Department of Religious Education in the Union 
Theological Seminary, ISTew York City, who read the 
manuscript and offered a number of very valuable sug- 
gestions and criticisms. 

E. E. Keesgei. 

Allentown, Pa. 



THE :t^ATUEE OF THE KII^GDOM OF GOD 



THE CHURCH AND THE EVER- 
COMING KINGDOM OF GOD 

CHAPTER 0]vrE 

THE NATURE OF THE KIITGDOM OF GOD 

What then is the kingdom of God in compliance with whose 
ideals and purposes all our church activities should be attempted? 



THE TEEM KIIsTGDOM OF GOD NOT CLEARLY DEFINED IN 
THE SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES 

WHEN" Jesus announced at the opening of his 
public ministry that the kingdom of heaven, 
or the kingdom of God, was at hand, he coined 
no new theological term. He simply made use of a 
phrase that had been in common usage among his people 
for several centuries. His audience was perfectly fa- 
miliar with the term. It was a term, however, that had 
not been defined by Israel's religious teachers in such a 
way as to convey the same meaning to all the people. 

The Old Testament Use of the Term. — The idea of an 
earthly reign of Jehovah was vaguely present in Israel's 
religious thought from the earliest times. The idea was 
thoroughly ethicized by the social prophets who flourished 
during the eighth and the seventh centuries. According 
to the teaching of these men the reign of Jehovah implied 
a righteous social order — a social order in which justice, 

3 



4 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

mercy, and peace would prevail for all classes in Israel. 
These great preachers had faith that this righteous social 
order would be ushered in through ethical and social for- 
ces that were resident in Israel. This was the conception 
of Amos and Micah, the first Isaiah and the unknown au- 
thors of the humanitarian laws in Deuteronomy. 

But the destruction of the nation by an alien foe, and 
the enforced subjugation of the people under foreign 
rulers, revolutionized Hebrew thought. Both their theol- 
ogy and their religious practice adapted themselves to 
the changed conditions. The hope of the advent of the 
kingdom of God was not destroyed. It shone all the 
brighter after the national sun had set. But the former 
hope of the evolution of the kingdom through ethical 
forces in Israel was gone. Eeligious thought became 
more and more apocalyptic. Hope became focused upon 
a direct divine intervention in the interest of the kingdom. 
The God of heaven would set up a kingdom that would 
never be destroyed, and that would break in pieces and 
destroy all other kingdoms.^ The Lord would raise up a 
divine king, or one unto the son of man, who would 
gather together a holy people, who would destroy the un- 
godly nations, and of whose dominion there would be no 
end.^ The longer the enforced subjugation of the nation 
continued, the more the emphasis was shifted from the 
thought of a kingdom of God growing out of the exist- 
ing Hebrew state by evolutionary forces, to the thought 
of a kingdom of God miraculously super-imposed on the 
remnant of the old Jewish state. But this renewed state, 
although supernaturally inaugurated, was still conceived 
of as essentially political in content, in spirit, and in pur- 
pose. 

To the contemporaries of Jesus the term kingdom of 
God conveyed a variety of meanings and aroused differ- 
ent reactions, as the term socialism does in our own day. 

1 cf . Daniel 2/ 44. 

2cf. The Psalms of Solomon, 17/23; also Daniel, 7/13, 14. 



The Nature of the Kingdom of God 5 

In the opinion of the zealots, or the ardent Jewish patri- 
ots, it signified the literal restoration of the old Jewish 
state with its capital at Jerusalem. It would conquer 
and absorb the Roman empire. In them the term in- 
spired revolutionary ambitions. They were ready to 
take up arms against Rome in order speedily to bring 
about the intensely longed-for vindication of Jehovah and 
His people. This may be one reason why Jesus used the 
term sparingly, even cautiously, in the earlier part of 
his ministry, and always in the vicinity of Jerusalem. 
On the other hand, the more religiously inclined Phari- 
sees, and the wiser Jewish patriots who saw the folly of 
an attempt to throw off the Roman yoke by resort to 
physical force, emphasized the other-world aspect of this 
inherited hope. They promulgated the belief that the 
kingdom of God was a super-earthly state, and that it 
would be miraculously established. Some of them taught 
that God Himself would interfere and would suddenly 
establish His kingdom, while others of their party taught 
that the Messiah, for whose advent they were waiting, 
would be the divine agent who would inaugurate the new 
era. But Jerusalem would still be the center of the new 
universe. The Pharisaic conception dominated the re- 
ligious thought of the times. 

The influence of the old social prophets however had 
not died out altogether. The noted Rabbi Hillel, who 
died a few years after the beginning of the Christian era, 
seems to have held the view of the social prophets of the 
eighth and the seventh centuries rather than that of the 
orthodox Pharisees of the Post-Maccabean period. Prom 
some of his reputed sayings it appears that he taught 
that the kingdom of God denotes social righteousness, 
and that the new era would be ushered in by natural and 
evolutionary forces — through education and through the 
social endeavor of a righteous people — rather than 
through miraculous interventions. 

John the Baptist, although of priestly extraction, and 



6 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

in spite of tlie ascetic bias of his nature, represented the 
view of his older contemporary, Hillel. His theme was: 
The kingdom of heaven is at hand; repent and enroll as 
citizens. When the excited multitudes asked him: what 
do you mean by repentance? what must we do to enroll 
as citizens of the kingdom? his answer was: cease to ex- 
ploit one another ; cease to tyrannize one another ; be just 
and merciful.^ According to the Gospels, John came to 
grief because he publicly denounced Herod Antipas for 
his illegal marriage with Herodias. According to Jo- 
sephus,^ John was imprisoned because Herod feared 
that he might precipitate a revolution among the masses. 
Both explanations indicate very forcibly that in the judg- 
ment of John the religion of the kingdom of God must 
deal with our social relationships. The kingdom which 
he announced as close at hand was the old social hope of 
a reign of justice and mercy, and of the triimaph of ethi- 
cal religion. 

It is quite probable that the multitudes who came to 
hear Jesus preach had no consistent opinion on the sub- 
ject. They had never analyzed either their religious 
faith or their social hope. In so far as the masses, in- 
cluding the immediate followers of Jesus, had any defin- 
ite opinion on the subject at all, it meant a restored Jew- 
ish state, somewhat refined and spiritualized, but with its 
headquarters still at Jerusalem. The Lord's Messiah, 
for whose advent they were waiting, would be the divine 
instrument or agent to bring about this much-desired res- 
toration. 

There is something fascinating and inspiring about 
the term. Even its vagueness does not destroy its 
fascination, for through all the confused and contradic- 
tory mass of current opinion runs a common element, just 
as there is a common thread running through all the con- 

1 Luke, 3/, 1-18. 

2 Matt. 14/, 3-5. 

8 Antiquities XVIII, 5, 2. 



The Nature of the Kingdom of God 7 

fused and conflicting present-day thought on the nature 
of the coming social order. This common element is a 
deep-rooted desire and an undying hope for a better so- 
ciety — a social order in which righteousness, justice, 
mercy, and peace would prevail for all Israelites. For 
some it was essentially an earthly hope; for others it was 
essentially a heavenly hope ; but for all it was the hope of 
a better world to come somehow^ sometime. It is this 
deep-rooted desire — this undying hope — in spite of the 
conflicting and contradictory ideas as to the when and the 
how of its realization, that gives permanent interest and 
value to the Old Testament conception of the reign or 
kingdom of God. It is the term around which clustered 
the inarticulate social aspirations of one of the greatest 
races of history. It represents Israel's collective hope 
which persisted in some form or other all through their 
history. 

Jesus' lose of the Term. — Such, in brief, was the term 
that Jesus found, and of which he made constant use. 
'No other term occurs so frequently in his discourses. 
No less than one hundred and eleven passages in the first 
three Gospels refer to some aspect of the kingdom. But 
Jesus was no systematic thinker. He was neither philos- 
opher nor theologian, whose purpose was to put upon the 
market a finished philosophy of life. He was a man 
possessed by a consuming passion for righteousness — a 
consuming love for God and for humanity — ^but he lacked 
the philosophic interest to define his terms or to systema- 
tize his thought. There is no evidence of any special 
effort to clarify the confused notion which his audience 
had inherited. He delivered no prepared lectures on 
the kingdom. Most of his allusions to the subject were 
incidental. He referred to the kingdom as the oc- 
casions arose to demand it. And, quite naturally, one 
occasion demanded reference to one aspect of the king- 
dom, while another occasion demanded reference to an 



8 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

altogether different aspect of it. This accounts for the 
many seemingly irreconcilable elements in the teachings 
of Jesus on the subject. And much of his teaching was 
put into parabolic form, a method of instruction that is 
very stimulating and suggestive, but not at all conducive 
to uniformity of opinion. There is no evidence that 
Jesus at any time made an effort to derive a conception 
of social organization from the motives which he declared 
must control life. He declared the principles and the 
motives that must control us, but the derivation of any 
specific social organization from these principles remains 
the duty of his followers.. 
I We should bear in mind also that only the most frag- 
• mentary records were kept of the literal sayings of Jesus. 
We do not have the record of one entire sermon or address 
that he ever delivered. And even these very fragment- 
ary records were not put into the form in which we now 
have them until long after the death of Jesus. And when 
they finally were put into form for general use no special 
care was shown for either logical or chronological order. 
The authors of the Gospels selected only what suited their 
i immediate purpose. And upon the material which they 
did select they stamped the impress of their own thought 
and feeling. 

There is a quite large apocalyptic element in the Synop- 
tic records of Jesus' teaching. As to the source of this 
material the New Testament critics have not been agreed. 
Some have attributed it to Jesus himself, while others 
have attributed it to the Judaizing influence which made 
itself felt in the Apostolic circle before the Gospels as- 
sumed their present form. But no matter what the source 
of this material may be, we must acknowledge its pres- 
ence. This explains why some have constructed an 
apocalyptic or super-mundane theory of the kingdom of 
God, and have been able to support their claim with texts 
taken literally from the Gospel records of the sayings 
of Jesus; while others have supported the prophetic or 



The Nature of the Kingdom of God 9 

social theory of the kingdom with an equally formidable 
array of proof-texts from the same records. The proof- 
text method of exegesis has resulted in much confusion of 
honest thought on this most fundamental and important 
of all religious subjects. 

In this discussion I shall proceed on the assumption 
that Jesus revealed the nature of the kingdom of God 
by his attitude toward men and life, rather than through 
his random allusions to the subject. In the plain car- 
penter from ISTazareth of Galilee we see what citizenship 
in the kingdom implies. In him the kingdom of God 
as it is to come here on this earth clothed itself in real flesh 
and blood, and expressed itself in terms of actual life. 
We are safe to say that the kingdom of God is a social 
order made up of citizens who are controlled in all their 
relationships by the principles and motives that controlled 
Jesus. Instead of constructing my theory of the kingdom 
of God from a number of proof-texts I shall de- 
duce it from the ethical ideals and principles which were 
incarnated in Jesus. I shall derive my theory of social 
organization from the motives which we know controlled 
Jesus' life, rather than from certain things that he is 
reported to have said. This method of exegesis will give 
us a theory of the kingdom of God that is true to revela- 
tion and that is at the same time pertinent to our age. 

Of this one thing there can be no doubt : that the funda- 
mental principles and motives of Jesus have social im- 
plications which we cannot escape. The principles which 
are embodied in the teachings of Jesus and which were 
incarnated in his life concern, first of all, "the life that 
now is." Right now is the time, and right here is the 
place, to apply them, although the full and complete 
realization of all their implications will extend far into 
the unknown future. 



10 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 



II 



THE NATUEE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD AS DETERMINED 
BY THE MOTIVES AND IDEALS OF JESUS 

The Kingdom of God is a Social Order Animated hy 
the Spirit of Service.* — The key-note in the life of Jesus 
was service. "I came, not to be ministered unto, but to 
minister.". . ."I am in the midst of you as one who 
serves." That expresses the controlling motive of his life. 
Everything else was subordinated to the unselfish desire 
to serve God and man. If Jesus had been animated by 
selfish motives he would have gained a place in "The 
Who's Who" of contemporary public opinion. The words 
of the wily tempter: "All these things — and the glory of 
them — will I give thee if thou wilt serve me," represented 
something real and possible. Jesus could have become 
the equivalent of the modern millionnaire in that ancient 
social order if he would have devoted his superior powers 
to gain wealth. He could have become a popular hero, 
the idol of the market-place, if he would have used his 
unique power over men for selfish ends. But none of 
these things, which appeal so strongly to the average man, 
could move Jesus from the noble purpose to serve rather 
than to be served. He did not come among us to get 
out of us all that he could for himself, but to give himself 
for our welfare and happiness. The absence of materia] 
reward did not change his purpose. Even the absence 
of appreciation and gratitude could not destroy in him the 
holy passion to serve rather than to be served. 

In this unique desire to serve Jesus reveals the first 
qualification for citizenship in the kingdom of God. 'No , 
one can claim citizenship in the kingdom until the un-: 
selfish desire to serve becomes the controlling motive of 
his life. So long as a man is governed by the desire to 
get personal gain out of the community rather than by 
the desire to serve the community he is a citizen of the 



The Nature of the Kingdom of God 11 

world, and not of tlie kingdom of God. So long as a man 
places profits, or dividends, or honor, or personal power, 
or any other thing, above the desire to be of service to 
society, he is not a citizen of the kingdom of God. 
Church membership, baptism, prayers, fastings, liberal 
offerings for benevolence, and such like, cannot be accepted 
as substitutes for this holy passion to serve. 

This desire to serve must become the controlling motive 
not only of individuals, but also of organized groups of 
individuals. The kingdom of God implies that com- 
munities and nations, and that all organized groups of 
individuals within the community and the nation such as 
corporations, stock-companies, political parties, etc., govern 
themselves by this Christ-like passion for service. Every 
department of our individual and social life must be 
leavened by this fundamental Christian motive. Ke- 
ligion, education, art, science, literature, business, politics, 
everything, must be governed by the desire to serve rather 
than by the desire for personal gain or personal advantage. 
No one can claim a place in the kingdom of God until 
the selfish desire for personal gain becomes subordinated 
to the unselfish desire to serve. 

The Kingdom of God is a Social Order that Values 
Man and His Welfare Above Everything Else. — Jesus 
was bom into a world that placed a very low value upon 
the individual man. Few commodities were cheaper in 
that ancient social order than the life of the individual 
citizen. Material things were valued more highly than 
men. One class of citizens was constantly being sacri- 
ficed in the interest of things for another class. It was 
a bold stroke of radicalism to take man from the cir- 
cumference of the universe and place him in the center. 
But that is what Jesus did. He was the source of a 
social evolution, the far-reaching effects of which we are 
feeling at this very hour, when he taught that the social 
order must be made to revolve around man and his wel- 



12 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

fare and not around things and profit in things. Jesus 
was the uncompromising enemy of every tendency to 
sacrifice man in the interest of things. He never became 
reconciled to any practice whether religious, political, or 
industrial, that subordinated the welfare and the happi- 
ness of man to any other consideration. He was un- 
sparing in his criticism of the sheep industry of Pales- 
tine, because it placed a higher value upon the sheep than 
it did upon the men who took care of them. He was se- 
vere in his criticism of the orthodox religion of his day be- 
cause it placed a higher value upon an institution like the 
Sabbath, or a thing like the altar, than it did upon men. 
The priest and the Levite, in the Parable of the Good 
Samaritan, became the target of his censure because they 
placed the formal worship of God above service to a 
needy human being. In his efforts to emphasize the 
supreme value of human life Jesus, on one occasion, made 
the seemingly extravagant statement that one soul is 
worth more than the whole material universe. Though 
a man should succeed in gaining the whole material world 
for his possession, but should lose his soul in the transac- 
tion, it would be a poor bargain. 'No other system of re- 
ligion or of ethics places so high a value upon the life of 
the individual as does the religion of Jesus Christ. 

But Jesus was no ascetic like John the Baptist. He 
did not despise things. He simply assigned things their 
proper place in the economy of life. He valued things 
very highly, but only as they had value for human life. 
He came among us as our servant; but the object of his 
service was life, rather than things. He did not come 
that we might have more things, but that we might have 
more life. His purpose was not to show us how to raise 
fifty sheep instead of twenty five on an acre of ground; 
but to inspire us to relate our sheep and all other things 
to the living of a worth-while life. He was interested in 
things, not for the sake of things, but because of their 
value for human life. 



The Nature of the Kingdom of God 13 

The kingdom of God is a social order that is controlled 
by this Christ-like concern for human life. It is a spirit 
in individuals and in organized society that places man 
and his welfare above every other consideration. No 
individual can claim citizenship in the kingdom of God, 
either here or hereafter, so long as he subordinates the 
welfare and the happiness of another human being 
to his own selfish interests. No institution or organ- 
ization can claim a place in the kingdom of God 
until its resources and its machinery are directed 
upon the welfare and the happiness of all the human 
beings whose lives it touches. A community can never 
be righteously proud of its thriving industries, its big 
bank deposits, its fine buildings, its beautiful parks, and 
its fine boulevards, until it has related all these material 
things to the moral and physical health of its children 
and to the welfare of its men and women. The glory 
of a nation is not the cattle that feed on its thousand hills, 
but the type of childhood that is produced in its homes 
and its schools, and the character of the men and the 
women who work in its mills and its factories. The object 
of religion, of education, of business, of politics, and of 
every other department of life, must be the welfare of all 
the people within the circle of its influence. Nothing 
can claim a place in the kingdom of God until it becomes 
possessed by Jesus' holy passion for human life and 
human welfare. Individuals, communities, and nations 
are pagan so long as they place their own interests above 
the welfare of humanity. 

The Kingdom of God is a Social Order that Embraces 
the Whole of Life.^One of the weaknesses of religion has 
been the inclination to devote itself to only a section of 
man's life, rather than to the whole of his life. Under 
the influence of the old trichotomous psychology religion 
divided the life of the individual into the three compart- 
ments of body, mind, and soul, between which it recog- 



14 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

nized no organic relation. The soul was considered an 
entity entirely different from its fleshly tabernacle. The 
two were simply held in juxtaposition for a brief span, 
but were really independent of each other. The business 
of religion was to aid the soul, chiefly by means of 
mechanical contrivances, to escape from its cage of flesh 
and fly away to heaven. Failing to recognize the organic 
relation between the physical and psychical phenomena 
of life, religion was not able to appreciate that such 
common things as wholesome food, comfortable clothing, 
and proper housing, could have any direct relation to 
our spiritual welfare. This one-sided view of life re- 
sulted in an equally one-sided service. The physical and 
social aspects of our life had no interest for religion. A 
sharp line of demarcation was drawn between the world 
of matter and the world of spirit, and between our social 
life and our religious life. The one was considered the 
domain of God and the other of the devil, and the two 
could have nothing in common. The things on the one 
side of this imaginary line were labelled "sacred," and the 
things on the other side "secular." Religion devoted itself 
only to the things on the one side of the line. The things 
on the other side — ^health, business, politics, recreation, 
etc., the things that make up the major portion of the 
average man's life — were left outside the circle of relig- 
ion's interest and activity. Our physical and our social 
life were only indirectly affected by our religion. 

There are indications at the present time that we may 
suffer a reaction in favor of a social philosophy that is as 
one-sided as religion. A social philosophy that ignores 
the interests of the soul as completely as the old type 
religion ignored the interests of the body is rapidly gain- 
ing prestige. Spiritual phenomena have no more interest 
for it than social phenomena had for religion. It sees 
no more value for our social life in prayer and divine 
worship than religion has seen in wholesome food and a 
tooth-brush for our spiritual life. Completely ignoring 



The Nature of the Kingdom of God 15 

the spiritual nature of man, this type of philosophy con- 
cludes that all is done that can be done for the highest ; 
human welfare when a w^age has been secured that will \\ 
enable men to buy a sufficient amount of wholesome food 
and clothing, and when men have been taught to comb 
their hair, brush their teeth, and take a bath. Such a 
philosophy fails to answer the needs of life as completely 
as does the type of religion that ignores man's physical 
and social needs. 

The kingdom of God is a social order that embraces 
the whole of life. It implies a philosophy of life thai 
recognizes the organic relation of body and soul, and a 
religion that ministers impartially to both. All that we 
know of life is that there are certain phenomena that are 
physical and others that are psychical; and that these two 
different phenomena never occur, so far as our finite 
understanding can discern, save as cause and effect of 
one another, or as parallel to each other. What affects 
the one will affect the other, or where one exists the 
other exists. To ignore either the one or the other is to 
slight something that is absolutely essential to our in- 
dividual and our social well being. 

The "abundant life" of the kingdom of God includes 
the physical and the spiritual, the temporal and the 
eternal. The sane and practical Jesus, "who knew what 
is in man," recognized the close inter-relation of the 
physical and the spiritual. He knew that an attempt to 
serve the one to the neglect of the other would be fruit- 
less. It is true that Jesus was primarily concerned about 
spiritual things. But that he was also concerned about 
physical matters — about men's bodies, about the food they 
had to eat and the clothes they had to wear — is evident 
from the fact that the many miracles, whatever disposition 
we may make of them, are almost without exception 
accounts of purely physical ministrations to needy people. 
It is clear that he who put the petition for our daily bread 
into such a conspicuous place in his brief model prayer 



16 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

was too human and too wise to belittle the physical 
foundation of our life. The ministry of Jesus included 
the whole man, his body as well as his soul, and this 
present time as well as the time that is to come. This 
all-inclusive service the religion of the kingdom of God 
clearly implies. 'No other ministry can lay the founda- 
tion upon which a righteous and lasting social order can 
be reared. 

The Kingdom of God is a Social Order that Includes 
the Welfare and the Happiness of all Men. — ^Among the 
masses of the Jews the opinion had prevailed that the 
kingdom had been appointed only for the children of 
Abraham. Strangers could be admitted only as servants 
of the Jews.. Jonah expressed the common feeling of his 
people when he became displeased at the proposition of 
Jehovah to save the l^inevites. Jonah would rather have 
seen the iTinevites destroyed than forgiven. The idea of 
a brother-hood world, a world in which the Gentiles would 
be on an equality with the favorite children of Jehovah, 
had not entered the mind of the masses of the Jews. 

The great contribution of the Hebrew prophets of the 
eighth and the seventh centuries, as we saw in the preced- 
ing section, was that they conceived of the reign of Je- 
hovah in terms of social righteousness. In their con- 
ception of a social order of justice and righteousness, of 
mercy and peace, those great men were not only the fore- 
runners of Jesus, but they were his equals. Nothing 
that Jesus ever said or did surpasses the passion of men 
like Amos, Hosea, Micah, the first Isaiah, and the authors 
of the humane legislation of Deuteronomy, in their zeal 
for a new social order in which justice, mercy, and peace 
were to prevail. Sone of these prophets so far trans- 
cended the provincialism of their day and race as to con- 
ceive of the possibility of the imiversal reign of Jehovah 
— a world in which all other races would be admitted to 
the privileges and the blessings of Jehovah's love and care. 

While Jesus did not surpass his predecessors in the 



The Nature of the Kingdom of God 17 

intensity of his zeal for social justice, he did surpass them 
all in the breadth of his world out-look. What his pre- 
decessors thought of as a possibility, Jesus declared as 
a plain fact. With Jesus it was not a desire or a hope, 
but a fact, that the kingdom of God, of which he declared 
himself to be the king, embraces all the races of the earth. 
There can be no mistake about this. Both his language 
and his conduct make his position unmistakably clear. 
He said : ^'Other sheep I have which are not of this fold ; 
them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice." 
When the Samaritan woman said: ^^Our fathers wor- 
shipped in this mountain, and ye say, that in Jerusalem 
is the place where men ought to worship,'' Jesus replied: 
^'Believe me, the hour cometh when neither in this moun- 
tain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father.". . . 
"But the hour cometh . . . when the true worshippers 
shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." By his 
sacrificial death he hoped ultimately to draw unto him- 
self not only all Jews, but all men. He prophesied that 
there would be a time when the people would come, not 
from Dan and Beersheba, but from the East and from 
the West, and would sit down in his kingdom. His 
disciples would be the light, not only of Jerusalem, but of 
the world ; and the salt, not only of Palestine, but of the 
earth. He removed all physical and local barriers such 
as descent from father Abraham and habitation in the 
Promised Land, when he made the will to live the un- 
selfish life the only ground of entrance into the kingdom. 
He ignored the Jewish racial prejudice and ministered 
freely to the citizens of Sychar and to the woman of 
Syro-Phoenicia. When he defined our neighbor as any 
one who is in need of our service, though he be an alien 
and an enemy, he showed in the most concrete and force- 
ful way possible, that service in the kingdom of God is 
not limited by the accidents of race or birth. JSTothing 
limits service in the kingdom of God but the absence of 
need. Nothing is clearer in the teaching of Jesus than 



18 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

that the kingdom of God includes the welfare and the 
happiness of all the races of men. 'No one dominant 
race, whether Jew or Roman, Teuton or Anglo-Saxon, 
whether white or yellow, may monopolize the privileges 
and the blessings of God's bounties and grace. The 
kingdom of God is a brotherhood of all the races of the 
earth.. 

ISTor may the good things of life become monopolized 
by any class of people within the same race or nation. 
The privileges and blessings of the kingdom are not 
meant for any particular class of people to the exclusion 
of other classes. The Great Creator who so bountifully 
endowed the earth, who put into the soil, the water, and 
the air, all the raw material that is necessary for the 
whole human race to live, is our Father. He is the 
Father not only of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles; 
and not of any privileged class among the Jews or 
among the Gentiles, but of all classes. He is the 
Father of the thin-blooded proletarians as well as of 
the blue-blooded aristocrats. The universal Fatherhood 
of God implies that the good things that have been created 
by the common Father are intended for the welfare and 
the happiness of all His children down to the very last 
one. If it does not mean this then it means nothing that 
is real. If it does not mean this then it contradicts our 
moral sense of fatherhood. If we do not mean this 
practical brotherhood — this justice and fairness in the use 
of the good things of life — ^when we preach the divine 
Fatherhood, then is our preaching but "sounding brass 
and a tinkling cymbal." 

The kingdom of God, viewed in the light of Jesus' funda- 
mental doctrine of the universal Fatherhood of God, is 
a social order whose citizens are all brothers and sisters, 
and who treat each other as brothers and sisters in all 
their dealings with each other. It is a social order con- 
trolled by the family spirit. All the children, big and 
little, weak and strong, are to enjoy the rights and privi- 



The Nature of the Kingdom of God 19 

leges of the good Father's house and home. Each mem- 
ber of the great family is to contribute his share to the 
welfare and happiness of all. ISTo one may shirk his duty 
and still be a worthy child. 'No one may use his superior 
advantages of experience, of skill, or of strength, to de- 
prive the weaker brothers and sisters of their rightful 
share of the joys and the privileges which belong to every 
member of the common family. No individual can claim 
citizenship in the kingdom of God who, by anything that 
he is or does, deprives one single child of the Father of 
the opportunity to live a full and happy life. The 
hingdom of God is a hrotherhood-world^ a family-world, 
everybody's world. 

The prophetic doctrine of the kingdom of God, or 
the idea of a social order regenerated by the controlling 
motives of the prophets and Jesus, must be given the 
central place in our religious program. It must be 
made the central thing in theology, in religious education, 
in evangelization, and in christianization. The under- 
lying purpose of all our religious activities must be the 
establishing of a social order founded upon the funda- 
mental Christian doctrine of the universal Fatherhood of 
God and its corollary: the universal brotherhood of man. 
This is our supreme Christian task. Nothing must be 
allowed to turn us from it. 

But the establishing of such an ideal social order, in 
such a selfish world like ours, requires, finally, the 
venturesome faith and the sublime courage of our Master. 

The Establishing of the Kingdom of God is a. Venture 
of Faith. — One of the persistent obstacles in the way of 
the coming of the kingdom of God on earth has been the 
lack of confidence in what it implies. Constructive efforts 
in the interest of the kingdom presuppose faith of the 
maturest type. 

We must, first of all, have faith in the soundness of the 



20 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

social principles of the kingdom. We must believe that 
the kingdom of God ought to come before we will make 
any efforts to have it come. One type of philosophy, 
of which Friederich Nietzsche, of Germany, was the most 
consistent and fearless exponent, has denied the moral 
validity of the ideals and principles of the kingdom of 
God. The ideals of the kingdom are declared to be con- 
trary to nature and, therefore, not only impracticable, 
but morally unsound. This philosophy constructs the 
laws for human society in strict compliance with the laws 
of nature. In the jungle each species of animal arms 
itself for offensive and defensive warfare with every 
other species. And within the same species, each animal 
lives for itself without regard for the other individuals of 
the species. Self-preservation is the first law of nature. 
It is this self-centered individualism, we are told, that 
has resulted in strong, fleet, and cunning animals. The 
weak perish in the struggle for existence, while the strong 
and the fit survive to perpetuate the species. 

This anti-social law of the jungle must, according to 
the teachings of this philosophy, be made the rule for 
human life. Each race must be inspired to preserve its 
own life regardless of other races. And each individual 
must be taught to seek his own welfare regardless of the 
welfare of other individuals. It is only through the con- 
stant struggle for our own interests that hardy races and 
hardy individuals can be developed. Any kind of social 
idealism that contradicts this plain law of the jungle and 
the type of animal hardihood that results from its practice, 
is denounced as unnatural and immoral. I^ietzsche 
called Jesus Christ the greatest fool that ever lived and 
his religion of brotherly love and of sacrifice the most 
pernicious teaching with which the human race was ever 
cursed. 

Applied to matters of government this type of philo- 
sophy will give us the militaristic state which ruthlessly 
plunders and destroys other states. Applied to industry 



The Nature of the Kingdom of God 21 

it will give us the monopolist who destroys his competi- 
tors in his own interest, and the profiteer who corners the 
food supply of the community to enrich himself. Ap- 
plied to the citizenship of the community in general it 
will give us efficient brutes instead of brothers of men. 
It is needless to say that the kingdom of God can make 
no progress where the atmosphere is contaminated by 
such a philosophy of life. Constructive efforts in the 
interest of the kingdom of God will not be made until 
men believe that its social principles are sound. ISTot 
until men have the conviction that the kingdom of God 
ought to come, will they make any efforts to have it come. 
But we must have faith not only in the soundness of the 
social ideals of the kingdom, but also in their practi- 
cability. We must not only believe that the kingdom of 
God ought to come, but also that it can come. More 
damaging to the progress of the kingdom of God than the 
brutal philosophy of the jungle, is the attitude of men 
who profess faith in the moral validity of the kingdom- 
ideals, but deny their practicability in actual life. The 
worst kind of atheism is that of respectable and influential 
men who admit that our human relationships ought to 
be governed by the social ideals of the kingdom, but deny 
that such a thing is possible. Our Christian churches are 
full of this type of atheist. Many of the leaders in our 
church activities are wholly devoid of faith in the practi- 
cability of the ideals of the kingdom in the affairs of 
politics and industry. These ideals serve as beautiful 
themes to preach about in the churches, but there is a 
dearth of faith in the possibility of practicing them in 
the market place and in the senate chamber. Jesus once 
complained that men were more ready to believe him 
when he spoke of earthly things than they were when he 
spoke of heavenly things. If he were here today he might 
have to reverse that complaint. We are quite ready to 
believe him when he speaks of heavenly things, but we are 
reluctant to believe him when he speaks of earthly things. 



22 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

We are quite ready to admit that Jesus knows how the 
affairs of heaven should he conducted, hut we tell him 
bluntly that we have no confidence in him when he speaks 
of the principles and the motives that should govern us in 
business and politics. There is a very common feeling, 
even among good church people, that the kingdom of God 
is too ideal for this real world. Its ideals may do for the 
society of angels, but not for the society of flesh and 
blood men and women. 

The other-world type of religion, which has held such 
a conspicuous place in the progress of Christianity, has 
systematically cultivated a lack of confidence in the 
prophetic conception of the kingdom of God. It has 
denied the possibility of the advent of the kingdom into 
this present evil world. The present world-order is de- 
clared to be in the clutches of the devil without any 
hope of its redemption. The only hope is to get as many 
individuals as possible safely out of this lost world before 
the crash of doom will come. The church, like l^oah's 
Ark, has been divinely commissioned to convey as many 
individuals as can be induced to enter it out of this world 
into the beyond^ where the kingdom of God begins. Pre- 
millennariianism, which unfortunately gained new 
prestige during the war, professes devout faith in the 
ideals of the kingdom of God. It ardently hopes and 
prays for the coming of the kingdom; but it is entirely 
devoid of faith in the coming of the kingdom of God 
into this evil world. It looks for the miraculous de- 
struction of the present social order, but not for its 
ethical transformation. Pre-millennarianism is blocking 
the way of the kingdom by systematically destroying faith 
in its practicability. The pious other-worldling is as 
much of a hindrance to the progress of the kingdom of 
God as is the unregenerated church man who delights to 
hear his pastor preach about the social ideals of Jesus, 
while he persists in conducting his business according to 
the laws of the jungle. ISTot until we believe that the 



The Nature of the Kingdom of God 23 

kingdom of God can come will we make any constructive 
efforts to have it come. 

Faith in tlie practicability of the ideals of the kingdom 
must be grounded in a prior faith in human nature, — 
faith in the ability of men to respond to the challenge of 
ideals. The faith which the kingdom of God implies is 
not a blind trust. It is not a rash venture in which reason 
deserts us. It is something eminently rational. It 
clearly foresees the difficulties of so great and so unselfish 
a task as the establishing of the kingdom of God imposes 
upon us. It foresees not only the moral inertia of the 
mass of mankind, but also the inevitable antagonism and 
opposition of the brute selfishness which is incarnated in 
human nature and in our social institutions. The old 
selfish order will not die without a struggle; and the new 
order will not be born without pain and blood. But the 
faith which the kingdom of God implies recognizes the 
possibility of a second birth of individuals and of the 
social order itself. The human nature that is innately 
selfish is also innately unselfish. Man is only partly ani- 
mal. He is also partly God. And we must have faith 
that the kingdom of God can be built upon that which is 
divine in human nature. 

Such was the faith of Jesus. He began building the 
kingdom of God upon the foundations which were already 
laid in the moral nature of man and in the culture of the 
ages. He grafted the social ideals of the kingdom of God 
upon the selfish human nature which he found in Pales- 
tine, in faith that the graft would grow; and he was not 
mistaken. He impregnated the selfish human nature 
which he found on the street and in the market-place with 
the social ideals of the kingdom, in faith that the selfish 
nature would be born again as an unselfish nature ; and he 
was not deceived. 'No one recognized the power of selfish- 
ness and the hideous reality of sin more keenly than Jesus. 
But in spite of this, he trusted men where his contem- 
poraries doubted. He had faith even in the ability of the 



24 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

publicans and the sinners — the outcasts of society — to 
respond to his kindness and his confidence in them; and 
his faith was rewarded. In the most trying hour of his 
ministry he said : ^'If I be lifted up, I will draw all men 
unto me." That was a majestic expression of faith in the 
universal ability of men to respond, under proper condi- 
tions ,, to the challenge of the unselfish ideals which the 
cross represents. 

It is upon such faith in human nature that the kingdom 
of God must be built. Confidence in the social instincts 
of men, — faith in the ability of men to respond to the 
challenge of the ideals of the kingdom when properly con- 
fronted with them, and under favorable conditions, is one 
of the essential requisites for constructive efforts in the 
interest of a better and a more just world. Every for- 
ward step in democracy has been a venture of faith, — 
faith in ideals, and faith in the ability of men to respond 
to the challenge of ideals. Democracy and brotherhood, 
which are only other names for the kingdom of God, can 
make no progress apart from faith in ideals and faith in 
men. The curse of the ancient and the medieval social 
order was the belief that the masses were animals who 
could neither be trusted nor educated. 

Our faith in men and in ideals must ultimately be 
grounded in faith in God. Jesus' faith in men, as well 
as his faith in the possibilities of the kingdom of God, was 
grounded in his faith in God. He trusted man because 
man is a child of God. In the judgment of Jesus, man 
is something more than ^'an animated clod of earth.'' He 
is more than an intelligent animal, who cannot be trained 
to respond to anything higher than the cravings of his 
stomach. The God in whom Jesus believed would not be 
the author of a human nature that could not be educated 
to respond to the social ideals of the kingdom. Since man 
is a child of God he has within him the possibilities, if 
properly nurtured, to manifest the traits of the Father 
Himself. It was his unique faith in God that gave Jesus 



The Nature of the Kingdom of God 25 

his unique faith in men. And it was this. same faith that 
gave him his unique confidence in the ultimate victory of 
the principles which he taught. The kingdom rests upon 
the heart of God himself. The infinite resources of God 
are back of it; therefore it cannot fail. Jesus^ faith in 
God was the source of his social optimism and of his moral 
courage. The kingdom might now be small and insig- 
nificant as the mustard seed, but it would become the 
biggest thing in the world because God is in it. The seed 
which he sow^ed, and which seemed to die in the furrows 
where he sowed it, would sprout and increase forever, be- 
cause the eternal God is interested in it. The kingdom of 
God would come, because it is the will of God that it shall 
come; and His will, though it may be temporarily ob- 
structed, cannot be defeated in the end. It was his faith 
in God that made Jesus the greatest moral hero of history. 
He was alone, yet not alone, for God the Father was with 
him. They might crucify him, but they could not defeat 
him, because a life dedicated to the cause of the eternal 
God cannot be defeated. 

It is because of our faith in God that the Christian 
conception of the kingdom furnishes a motive power for 
social service that cannot be generated in any other way. 
Our Christian faith relates us to our fellow man, and 
inspires us to serve him, as no other philosophy of life 
does. Because of his relation to God the Father, man is 
infinitely worthy of the sacrificial service which the king- 
dom of God bids us render. It is no mere creature of 
time, who to-day is and to-morrow will be consigned to the 
scrap-heap of the universe to be worked over again, whom 
we are asked to serve in the kingdom of God. The object 
of our service is a child of God, — a being whose moral 
relation to God gives him a value far above all material 
things. And because we are children of the same Father 
God, my neighbor and I are brothers, real brothers, though 
his skin may be black and mine white. 'No other concep- 
tion of our human relationship can make service and sacri- 



26 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

fice as natural and as easy as this Christian conception 
does. 

And our Christian faith that it is the will of God that 
such a brotherhood-world shall come gives us courage to 
work for this end. Since it is the will of God that such 
a world shall come we are confident that no selfish powers 
will be able to persist eternally against it. As the stars 
in their courses are said to have fought against Sisera 
and his hosts in the days of Deborah and Barak, so the 
goodness and the unselfishness that are at the heart of 
the universe will fight ag'ainst the selfilshness that is 
blocking the way of the kingdom of God. 

It was at this point that Immanuel Kant, the keenest 
ethical analyst of all times, discovered the need of faith in 
God. After he had proved that the human understanding 
is so constituted as to be unable to know whether there is 
a God or not, he discovered the absolute need of faith in 
a good God in order to encourage us in our efforts to live 
up to the arduous duties which our own moral nature 
imposes upon Vl^)^ Kant meant to say that if it were not 
for the faith that somehow infinite goodness is backing us 
up in our efforts to be what we ought to be and to do what 
we ought to do we might become the victims of moral 
fatalism. And he is right. Kant's argument has a social 
as well as an individual significance. If it were not for 
our faith in a good God who wills a righteous social order, 
and who somehow places his infinite moral resources at 
our disposal, we might well despair of the possibility of 
ever realizing on this earth such ideal human relation- 
ships as the kingdom of God implies. But since we 
believe that the good God wills it, we have the courage to 
do our bit, believing that in the slow but sure progress of 
social evolution no efforts for righteousness will be wasted 
or defeated. 

1 See : The Critique of the Practical Reason, also The Critique 
of Judgment. 



The Nature of the Kingdom of God 27 

The Establishing of the Kingdom of God Presupposes 
the Spirit of Sacrifice. — The establishing of the kingdom 
of God in an unsocial world like onrs requires not only the 
vision and the faith of Jesus, but also his sacrificial spirit 
and his moral courage. If the kingdom of God shall be 
established, the followers of Christ must be willing to make 
sacrifices that others may have more life; and some of 
them, like their Master, may be asked to make the supreme 
sacrifice for the sake of those social ends which the king- 
dom of God sets before us. The twentieth century heralds 
of the kingdom must expect to find the same stubborn 
opposition that the prophets and Jesus found in their day. 
If Jesus himself were here to-day and would preach as he 
did in Palestine, I have no doubt that orthodox religion 
and predatory politics would combine to get him out of the 
way as they did then. While the law of the land would 
not permit his crucifixion, he would be declared a danger- 
ous and undesirable citizen and would be ostracized from 
polite society. It cannot be expected to be otherwise in a 
world that is still so largely controlled by the jungle spirit. 
The recent social revival in certain sections of the church 
is provoking the same relentless reaction that persecuted 
the prophets and crucified Jesus. 

For example, the Lusk Legislative Commission of l^ew 
York State recently issued several volumes under the 
caption: ^^Eevolutionary Radicalism.'' The report men- 
tions by name Catholic priests, theological professors, and 
a number of ministers of various denominations who 
are guilty (in the judgment of the Commission) of 
^'revolutionary radicalism.'' But the radicalism of which 
these men are accused is simply the radicalism of Jesus 
of J^azareth. One specific object of the report is to 
intimidate the prophets of the kingdom, and to discredit 
them before the unthinking pul3lic. The Pittsburgh 
Employers Association, in an open letter addressed 
to the secretaries of all Correspondent Employers As- 



28 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

sociations, has threatened the discontinuance of all 
moral and financial support of the Y. W. C. A., and of all 
the churches affiliated with the Federal Council of the 
Churches of Christ in America. The assumed reason for 
this drastic action is (to quote their own words) that "the 
industrial program adopted by the national council of 
the Y. W. C. A. is detrimental to our American institu- 
tions^' ; and '^that radical and bolshevik elements in our 
churches are cooperating through the Federal Council.'' 
What certain employers consider as ''bolshevistic and revo- 
lutionary" may be inferred from a statement in the issue 
of Industry for July 15, 1920, in which an attack is made 
on one of the secretaries of the Federal Council on the 
ground that ''he intimated that the teachings of Jesus 
Christ should be brought into the industrial field, and that 
the cardinal principles of the Sermon on the Mount should 
be injected by the churches into industrial relations." 
Certain wealthy reactionaries refuse to give any further 
financial support to the official boards and the schools of 
their denomination because they teach the social Gospel 
of the kingdom of God. It is an effort to starve the 
boards of the church and the schools of the prophets 
into submission to the dictates of wealth. In "The 
Beast," Judge Ben Lindsey shows his appreciation 
of the dangers to which those preachers are exposed who 
dare to preach the principles of the kingdom in the many 
congregations throughout the country whose ruling spirits 
prosper on the violation of these very principles. There 
are many individual ministers, teachers, and social work- 
ers, who are being doomed to social martyrdom because 
they persist in preaching and teaching the constructive 
radicalism which follows from the ideals and the motives 
of Jesus as naturally as warmth follows sunshine. 

It is not enough that we see the social implications of the 
ideals of Jesus, and that we have faith in their soundness 
and practicability. We must also have the courage to give 
expression to our convictions in a world that criticizes and 



The Nature of the Kingdom of God 29 

threatens us. Apart from an intrepid courage and the 
spirit of sacrifice the kingdom of Grod, or the brotherhood- 
world, will not be established. 

We can understand the death of Jesus only as we 
approach it from this social angle. His death was no mere 
dramatic stage performance such as orthodox theology has 
made of it. The tragic sacrifice on Calvary was real. 
There never was a sacrifice that was more real than that of 
Jesus of Nazareth. It was an heroic sacrifice for the 
principles of the kingdom of God in a world that did not 
believe in them. That he would have to surrender his 
convictions or make the supreme sacrifice was clearly fore- 
seen by him for some time. Several months before the 
tragic end came he said : ^'I am the good shepherd.'' . . . 
"The good shepherd will give his life for the sheep." . . . 
"I came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to 
give my life a ransom for many." Jesus did not invite 
persecution as the fanatic or the zealot sometimes does. 
That he shrank from the awful sacrifice, as any normal 
man would, is evident from his agonizing prayers in the 
garden. But while he did not court martyrdom, neither 
was he frightened nor disheartened by the chilling shadow 
of the cross when it flung itself across the path that led to 
duty. He might have saved his life by renouncing the 
principles for which he stood ; and he knew this right well. 
But his devotion to his ideals made it impossible for him 
to surrender to the enemy. He would suffer death rather 
than be untrue to himself. He faced death, even the death 
of the cross, rather than be a traitor to his convictions. It 
was a majestic manifestation of that sacrificial spirit which 
the establishing of the kingdom of God in a selfish world 
pre-supposes. 

The social theory of the kingdom of God may not he 
able to offer us the complacent peace of mind that is pro- 
duced by the belief that God has accepted the super- 
meritoriousness of the sacrificial death of Jesus and has 
credited it to us because we have joined the church and 



30 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

said our prayers. On the contrary, tlie social theory of 
the kingdom requires of each individual Christian not only 
the social vision of the prophets and Jesus, but also their 
heroic spirit. It demands of each individual Christian the 
willingness, if the occasion should necessitate it, to shed 
his own blood for the sake of the ideals and the principles 
for which Jesus shed his blood. Our Christian theology 
must readjust itself to the stern fact that the kingdom of 
God cannot be established on this earth of ours save 
through the spirit of sacrifice for principles. Then: 

"Trumpeter, sound for the splendor of God! 
Sound the music whose name is law, 
Whose service is perfect freedom still, 
The order august that rules the stars ! 
Bid the anarchs of night withdraw. 
Too long the destroyers have worked their will. 
Sound for the last, the last of the wars ! 
Sound for the heights our fathers trod. 
When truth was truth and love was love, 
With a hell beneath, but a heaven above. 
Trumpeter, rally us, rally us, rally us, 
On to the City of God." 



THE EELATIOISr OF THE CHKISTIAE" 
CHUECH TO THE Ki:NrGDOM OF GOD 



CHAPTEE TWO 

THE RELATION OF THE CHKISTIAN" CHUECH TO THE 
KINGDOM OF GOD 

THERE has been a very general identification of the 
church and the kingdom of God. "The church 
militant" has been identified with the kingdom on 
earth, and "the church triumphant" with the kingdom in 
its future or heavenly consummation. To millions of 
present-day Christians — perhaps to the majority of Chris- 
tians — entering the kingdom means joining the church; 
and establishing the kingdom means furthering the inter- 
ests of the church. Much has been lost through this con- 
fusion of terms and conceptions that should be clearly 
distinguished. 

What then is the Christian church? And what is her 
relation to the kingdom of God ? 



THE NATTJEE AND PUEPOSE OF THE CHEISTIAN CHUECH 
ACCOEDING TO HEE OWN CLAIMS. 

To form a true conception of the Christian church and 
of her real mission we must first of all dispossess our 
minds of much that she has said about herself. The 
church has not been a good example of that spirit of meek- 
ness which Jesus said was to be characteristic of his fol- 
lowers. On the contrary, she has been inclined to exalt 
herself, l^o sooner did she come into possession of great 
wealth and power than she began to develop a very pro- 
nounced self-consciousness and to make very pretentious 

33 



34 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

claims for herself. Because of what the church has said 
about herself many credulous people have inferred that 
she is a sort of Fourth Person in the God-head. 

Quite early in her history the Christian church began to 
claim an absolute monopoly of the grace and favor of God. 
She denied that salvation could be found anywhere out- 
side of her bounds, or in any other way than through the 
ministrations of her duly ordained ministry. It is true 
that this claim had a basis in fact. For several centuries 
it was literally true that there was no Christian nurture 
outside of the Christian church. The Christian traditions 
were found only in the church. The Christian spirit was 
found only among the organized groups of Christians. 
The Christian church of the first few centuries was the 
only organization that made an effort to incarnate the 
principles of the kingdom of God. Everything in pagan 
society was opposed to the unselfish ideals and purposes 
of the kingdom. During these fateful years the Christian 
church was like a hothouse in which the tender germs of 
Jesus' teachings were preserved. Society owes her a debt 
of devout gratitude for this service. 

But the church continued to claim a strict monopoly of 
salvation long after these peculiar conditions ceased to 
exist. Long after other agencies — science, art, literature, 
and philosophy — had shown more interest in the real aims 
of the kingdom than the church did, she still persistently 
denied that any good thing was found outside of her 
bounds. She still denied that divine grace flowed any- 
where save through the finger tips of her ordained clergy. 
A hierarchy of middlemen claimed an airtight monopoly 
of the grace and favor of Almighty God. And for decep- 
tion, unscrupulousness, and extravagance, these middle- 
men in the Boman Catholic scheme of salvation outclassed 
anything of the kind that we know of in our modern in- 
dustrial system in which the middleman plays such a 
conspicuous part. The claims which the church made for 
her clergy were preposterous. For her ordinary priests 



Belation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 35 

she claimed a spiritual primacy which their daily conduct 
plainly contradicted. For her chief pontiff she claimed 
infallibilityj a prerogative which we have a right to claim 
only for Almighty God Himself. When the pope spoke 
"excathedra" he was said to reproduce the voice of God 
as the phonograph reproduces the voice of the singer. 
When he spoke in his official capacity he could make no 
mistake. What he thus said was both law and Gospel. 
In this way the head of the church was made a substitute 
for God instead of a servant of God. As the Catholic 
church grew in wealth and power she boldly usurped the 
place of the kingdom ; and henceforth became an end to be 
served instead of a means of service. She claimed to 
hold in her hands the keys to heaven and hell. These 
dread keys she was constantly using in the interest of her 
own ends and purposes. These claims implied nothing 
less than that Almighty God had resigned His position on 
earth in favor of the pope and his institution. 

The Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believ- 
ers eliminated the Catholic middleman as the sole medi- 
ator of salvation. It placed the clergy and the laity on an 
equality of privilege before God. But Protestantism, 
while it placed the whole membership of the church upon 
the same plane before God, nevertheless continued to con- 
sider the church, as an institution, as the sole mediator 
of divine gTace and favor. Protestantism, like Catholic- 
ism, denied that divine grace was operative outside of the 
church. John Calvin, the theological champion of the 
Reformation movement, voiced the sentiment of all 
Protestantism when he said: ^'There is no other means of 
entering into life unless she (i. e., the church) conceive 
us in her womb and give us birth, unless she nourish us 
at her breast, and, in short, keep us under her charge and 
government, until, divested of mortal flesh, we become like 
the angels. Moreover, beyond the pale of the church there 
is no forgiveness of sins, and no salvation can be hoped 
for. . . . The paternal favor of God and the special 



36 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

evidence of spiritual life are confined to his people (i. e. 
the church people), and hence the abandonment of the 
church is always fatal." ^ That is equivalent to denying 
that God uses any other instrument than the church in the 
building; of His kingdom, or that He is concerned about 
anybody but the church people. 

The orthodox Protestant church of our own day still 
claims for herself a supernatural origin and nature essen- 
tially different from that of any other institution on earth. 
She still declares herself to be the divinely commissioned 
ark of safety which people must enter in order to be saved 
from the wrath of God and from eternal doom. She still 
claims the custodianship of the keys that lock and unlock 
the doors of the eternal world. She calls herself "the 
mystical body of Christ," by which she implies some super- 
natural or magical relationship with Jesus — a relation- 
ship that differs essentially from those ethical relationships 
which we know and understand as human beings. She 
declares that she has a panacea for all ills, although there 
are many ills at her very doors which she has not even 
noticed. The church is still suffering from an abnormal 
imagination. 

Professor Rauschenbusch says: "The fact is that the 
church has watered its own stock and cannot pay dividends 
on all the paper it has issued. It has made claims for 
itself to which no organization made up of human beings 
can live up." ^ But the day has passed when the church 
can make capital out of fictitious claims. ISTo institution 
can afford to flood the market with paper on which it fails 
to pay dividend. The interests of the kingdom of God 
demand that the church make a voluntary sacrifice of her 
watered stock. It is to her own disadvantage to continue 
making claims for herself to which she does not and can- 
not live up. 

iThe Institutes, Book IV. I, 4. 

2 A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 122. 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 37 

II 

THE NATUElE AND PURPOSE OF THE CHRISTIAI^ CHURCH 
AS DETERMINED BY THE FACTS OF HER ORIGIN 

What then is the Christian church ? And what is her 
special relation to the kingdom of God ? 

This question must be answered in the light of the quite 
natural origin of the church, and not in the light of what 
the church of a later day said about herself. To one who 
is more familiar with the claims of the church than with 
the facts of history it may be a shock to be told that Jesus 
had nothing at all to say about this great institution. 
While the kingdom of God absorbed his whole life and 
thought, the church, as we have come to know it, seems not 
to have concerned him at all. There are only two of all 
the recorded sayings of Jesus that refer to the church, and 
both of these are of doubtful authenticity. There is no 
reliable evidence that Jesus ever spoke a word in reference 
to the church. 

This, however, does not mean that Jesus did not foresee 
the inevitableness of some organization to perpetuate his 
work. The ideals of Jesus could not have been perpetuated 
without embodiment in some institution. But it would 
have been quite unlike him to give any specific instruc- 
tions as to the form, or the modus operandi, of the insti- 
tution that should continue his work. Jesus revealed the 
ideals and the principles of the kingdom; and then en- 
trusted the completion of the task to those who shared his 
convictions. With what outward forms the ideals of the 
kingdom would clothe themselves; by means of what in- 
stitutions or organizations they would perpetuate them- 
selves among the different peoples of the earth, and in 
succeeding ages, did not seem to concern Jesus. The in- 
culcation of a new spirit was what he was concerned about. 
Everything else would take care of itself; for it is char- 
acteristic of living things that they will give themselves 



38 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

suitable bodies. Every type of life creates suitable means 
to perpetuate itself. Every living thing evolves the kind 
of body tliat will best realize its peculiar genius and pur- 
pose. This is true in the animal and plant world ; and it 
is equally true in the world of human society. The genius 
and spirit of an organism, whether animal or vegetable, 
may, in the course of its evolution, develop different forms 
of body, some appendages being lopped off and others 
being added, before that form is realized that will best 
serve the spirit and purpose of the organism. And it is 
not otherwise in the kingdom of God. The spirit and 
genius of the kingdom may, in the long course of history, 
give rise to different forms of religious institutions, to 
different forms of political and industrial systems, before 
those types will finally be evolved that will best serve the 
spirit and purpose of the kingdom. 

Jesus, in his brief ministry, was dealing with life and 
with ideals, and not with organizations and institutions. 
But life in a disembodied form, as was just stated, is in- 
conceivable. Ideals without incorporation in institutions 
will perish. It was this plain biological law, and not some- 
thing that Jesus said or that the Spirit did, that gave birth 
to the Christian church. Moved by loyalty to their be- 
loved Master, and inspired by his promises, the disciples 
set themselves to the task of perpetuating his influence 
among men. Their labors were very simple at first. 
There was neither plan nor leadership in their efforts. 
But such a state of affairs could not continue long; for 
where there is life there will be organization. Within a 
year or two the evangelistic efforts of the disciples resulted 
in a simple organization. This was as natural as it is for 
the living seed to put forth stem and leaves. This simple 
Apostolic organization was the beginning of the Christian 
church. The organization was not formed in compliance 
with any instructions that had previously been given, but 
under the constraint of a biological necessity. The 
Christian church was purely the result of circumstances. 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 39 

The primitive organization consisted of a bodj of men 
and women held together and controlled by a common 
faith, a common loyalty, and a common purpose. There 
was a very simple division of labor, some being set apart 
as preachers and teachers, while others were entrusted 
with the more material and practical interests of the new 
community. The purpose of the organization was to 
realize within their own group the spirit and the ideals of 
Jesus, and to extend his influence in ever widening circles 
over the earth. 

It is clear from the simple facts of the origin of the 
Christian church that she is not an end in herself, but a 
means for the realizing of the principles and ideals of 
Jesus. She is an instrument for the establishing of the 
kingdom of God on earth. She is this, and only this. 
Any attempt to exalt her above this can only result in 
degrading her into something less than she is. Her origin 
was not any more supernatural than the origin of our 
public schools. She is just as much a man-made institu- 
tion as is the organization that serves the purpose of 
education. Her constituency and her machinery are as 
human as the constituency and the machinery of the 
schools^ It is in this light that we must judge her quite 
evident shortcomings. The only divine distinction that 
the church can truly claim for herself is the divine purpose 
of establishing the kingdom of God. When she ceases to ^ 
serve the interests of the kingdom she forfeits not only her ^ 
claim to divine distinction, but even her right to exist. 

But in the degree that the church is true to her divinely 
entrusted task of establishing the kingdom she may well 
claim a unique place among all the institutions of society ; 
for there is no other task so great and so holy as this one. 
This social task to which the church stands committed by 
virtue of her origin, furnishes the basis for a revaluation 
of her mission in our modem life. If she will consecrate 
her marvellous resources in men, in machinery, and in 
traditions, to this holy cause, she will render a service 



40 The Church and the Ever -Coming Kingdom of God 

whicli no other institution is able to render. The king- 
dom of God,, or the brotherhood-world, cannot be estab- 
lished by unorganized individual efforts, or by independent 
group efforts. It can be done only as many individuals 
who cherish its ideals will coordinate their efforts in and 
through some institution. Individuals become real factors 
in the establishing of the kingdom of God only as they 
unite their efforts with other individuals in and through 
an institution that is dedicated to the cause of the kingdom. 
Some great and mighty institution, whether it will be a 
kingdom-filled church, or some other kingdom-filled insti- 
tution, is an indispensable necessity in the difficult task of 
Christianizing the social order. It is my faith in 
the church's latent power as a factor in social regeneration, 
a power which no other institution possesses at the present 
time, that makes me zealous for her conversion to the 
social point of view of the kingdom of God. 

As an instrument of the kingdom of God it is the duty 
of the Christian church to render every service and to 
encourage every effort that will advance the progress of 
righteousness. In the remaining chapters there are refer- 
ences to many specific kinds of service which the church 
should render in the interest of the kingdom. But there 
are two outstanding duties of the Christian church that 
require special emphasis at this point. As the logical suc- 
cessor of the synagogue which was the place of instruction, 
and of the temple which was the place of worship, the 
church has fallen heir to the two-fold responsibility of 
leadership in religious education and of leadership in 
divine worship. These two fundamental duties must be 
well performed before her other duties can be effectively 
executed. It is through these two fundamental disciplines 
that the church must help to lay the foundations for the 
superstructure of a righteous and lasting social order. 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 41 

m 

THE CHUKOH AND EELIGIOUS EDUCATION" 

The most important duty of the Christian church is 
that of leadership in religious education. 'No other func- 
tion is so far-reaching in its total effects as this one. It 
is in this capacity that the church has an opportunity to 
exert a vital influence on every department of the 
world's life. It is as a teacher of religion that she is the 
good house-wife of the Parable who puts the regenerating 
leaven into the mass of social dough. It is as a teacher 
of religion that she sets up the standards and the ideals 
after which we must strive in our efforts to build a better 
world. It is as a teacher of religion that she creates the 
public sentiment and the social conscience that will result 
in constructive efforts for social betterment. The educa- 
tional institutions of the church are the primal agencies 
of religious education ; and the pulpit, the Sunday school, 
the home, schools for week-day religious instruction, 
classes for preparation in church membership, classes for 
the application of Christian principles to our social life, 
the church papers, books, pamphlets, etc., are the channels 
through which the Christian message must find its way 
into our individual and our social life. 

Three things are imperatively necessary if the church 
would meet the obligations that rest upon her as religious 
educator in the twentieth century. She must teach the 
religion of the Jcingdom of God and not a religion of her 
own making; and she must adapt her teaching to the in- 
tellectual world and to the social world of to-day. 

The Church Must Teach the Religion of the Kingdom 
of God. — That there has been a departure from the sim- 
ple, human religion of the kingdom of God as it was 
preached and practiced by the prophets and by Jesus is a 
plain fact of history; and to this fact, more than to any 
other factor, must be attributed the social inefficiency that 



42 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

has been charged against historical Christianity. It is 
very necessary, in the interest of a system of religions 
education that shall meet the demands of onr day, that we 
see in what way and to what extent our Christian theology 
has departed from the ideals and motives of our Master. 
The first step in the revival of a religious education that 
will be a vital factor in the establishing of the kingdom of 
God is the unlearning of a mass of traditions and practices 
that have been perpetuated as Christian, but which are 
not Christian in the sense that they are not rooted in any 
thing that Jesus was or said or did. The thing that con- 
cerns us especially in this discussion is the fact that the 
non-Christian accretions in our theology have side-tracked 
the social ideals of the kingdom of God, and have been 
destructive of the social passion which those ideals gen- 
erate. 

(a).. The theological departure from the doctrine of 
the hingdom of God. . . . The departure from the king- 
dom-idea as the controlling motive of our religious life 
began with the first generation of Christians. There is a 
sudden change of terminology and of view-point as we 
pass from the Synoptic Gospels to the Gospel according 
to St. John. In the Fourth Gospel the term : eternal life, 
which is an individual idea, takes the place of the Synoptic 
term: kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven, which is a 
social idea. The Fourth Gospel reflects the conception of 
a later generation. It is an interpretation rather than a 
record of the Master's teachings. 

The change of viewpoint and of motive is still more 
marked as we pass from the Gospels to the Epistles. The 
central theme of Jesus' preaching was the kingdom of 
God, or the kingdom of heaven. This one subject absorbed 
his whole life and thought. But in the Epistles we find 
the idea of the kingdom to have passed from the center to 
the circumference. ;N"ot only does the term kingdom of 
God rarely occur in the Epistles as compared with the 
Synoptic Gospels, but when it does occur it denotes some- 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 43 

thing essentially different from tlie social conception of 
the prophets and the ethical idealism of Jesus. 

It has been pointed out by certain historians that the 
Eoman government's watchful suspicion of all appearances 
of treason prevented the early Christians from speaking 
freely about the kingdom of God, or of Jesus as the 
Founder of the kingdom. The mere use of the terms 
king and kingdom might have incriminated the Apostles 
in a Roman court. But there were other factors than 
this fear of the Roman government that forced the king- 
dom-idea from the center to the circumference of Apostolic 
thought.- With the Apostles the person of Jesus displaced 
the idea of the kingdom which he came to establish. 
Jesus preached the kingdom of God, and the Apostles 
preached Jesus. This was quite natural, for loyalty to a 
person like Jesus is much easier than loyalty to an idea 
like the kingdom of God. But the thing that concerns us 
especially in this discussion is the fact that it was not 
Jesus the Founder of the kingdom of God whom they 
preached and to whom they were loyal, but Jesus the 
Supernatural Savior. Instead of salvation for sl sinful 
world, the Apostles preached salvation from a sinful 
world. It was this Apostolic emphasis of Jesus as the 
Supernatural Savior from sin, instead of Jesus the 
Founder of the kingdom of God, that started the Christian 
church on her long theological journey away from the 
social ideals and purposes which center about the prophetic 
conception of the kingdom of God. The displacement of 
Jesus the Founder of the kingodm of God by Jesus the 
Supernatural Savior has meant an incalculable social loss 
to the church and the world. The speedy return of Jesus 
to destroy the existing social order became of more absorb- 
ing interest to the first generation of Christians than his 
first coming to save it. The kingdom of God was accord- 
ingly thought of as a super-earthly state that would be 
established suddenly and miraculously when the Son of 
Man would come in his glory. Practically all of the 



44 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

references to the kingdom in the Epistles emphasize this 
eschatological aspect of it. 

But the primal factor in the displacement not only of 
the prophetic conception of the kingdom of God, but of 
Jesus himself, was the Apostle Paul. ^ That noble soul 
saved Christianity from a premature death through his 
heroic efforts to win its independence from Judaism. Had 
Paul not won in the controversy with the Judaizing Chris- 
tians, Christianity would very likely have lingered on for 
a while as a Jewish sect, and would then have died out. 
But for the Christianity which he so heroically saved from 
an early grave, he unconsciously substituted his own inter- 
pretation ; and the church has accepted the Pauline inter- 
pretation in place of the original religion of Jesus. 

It was, in the first place, the great misfortune of St. 
Paul never to have known Jesus personally. Whatever 
facts he knew about his Lord he had obtained through 
secondary sources. For reasons that are well known, 
Paul purposely dissociated himself from the men who 
were eye and ear witnesses of the life and teachings of the 
Master. He had been converted for a number of years 
before he had a personal interview with any of the men 
who were personally acquainted with Jesus. We have no 
doubt that the loyal Paul gathered all the external facts 
that were known about Jesus; nor do we doubt that he 
understood these facts as well as any of the eye and ear 
witnesses did. But the significant fact remains that 
Gamaliel, and not Jesus, was his teacher. As a special 
student of Gamaliel from his youth, and as an adept in 
Kabbinical dialectics, he interpreted the simple facts 
which he had gathered in accordance with the bias of his 
lifelong Jewish trainling. His philosophical nature 

^ For a comprehensive study of this subject see : Pfleiderer, 
Paulinism, 2 vols, London, 1877. Also Pfleiderer, The Influence 
of the Apostle Paul on the Development of Christianity, K Y., 
1885. For a critical study of this problem see : Ignatius Singer, 
The Rival Philosophies of Jesus and Paul, London, 1919. 



Eelation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 45 

could not rest satisfied with the simple facts ^i^out the 
life and teachings of Jesiis as he had received them. 
His dialectical instinct demanded a theory to account for 
the facts. His new Christian ideas had to be reconciled 
with certain ideas that were derived from his early home 
life and his later Rabbinical training. The origin of 
sin, the nature of salvation, the reason for the death of the 
Messiah, and the ground for the divine forgiveness of 
sin, had to be fused into a system in accordance with some 
organizing principles of thought. The result was a 
speculative system of theology which, in certain very im- 
portant respects, is quite different from the simple ^^good 
news" of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of 
man as preached and practiced by the peasant prophet 
of Nazareth. 

St. Paul constructed the cardinal doctrine of his the- 
ological system, a doctrine which has held a central place 
in the theologizing of nineteen centuries, out of his own 
extraordinary experience, and not out of anything that 
Jesus had ever said or intimated. The material for his 
doctrine of justification by faith through the grace of God 
without any merit of his own was furnished by his strange 
experience on his way to Damascus; and the sacrificial 
ritual of his people, rather than the teachings of Jesus, 
furnished the principles in accordance with which the ex- 
perience was explained and elaborated. According to 
his own severe judgment, he was the chief of sinners. 
But God forgave him, and accepted him as a disciple. St. 
Paul's intellect demanded an explanation of the ground on 
which God could forgive such a sinner as he was. Jesus' 
explanation of the divine forgiveness of sin was very 
simple, and ethically very satisfying. Jesus said that 
God forgives men because He is their Father; and that 
He does so on the ground that a father forgives a child. 
Jesus said that God justifies men on the ground that they 
love Him as a child loves, and that they love one another 
as brothers love. But Paul does not betray the slightest 



46 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

influence of Jesus in the explanation which he gives of 
his own experience of divine forgiveness. His God was 
a Sovereign law-giver rather than a Father. Paul had 
broken the laws of the Sovereign God. Infinite justice 
demanded satisfaction. But how can such a demand be 
satisfied ? The idea of vicarious sacrifice, which held a 
prominent place in the ritual of his people, furnished 
Paul with the principle of explanation. Jesus must have 
offered himself as a vicarious sacrifice for sinful men; 
and the Sovereign God must have accepted this sacrifice 
as a payment or satisfaction for man's sin. Through 
faith in the vicarious death of Jesus Paul felt justified 
before the Sovereign God without any merit of his own. 

While this purely forensic idea of justification, and 
the purely individualistic and mechanical conception of 
salvation that is associated with it, m.ay be supported by 
one, or perhaps two, proof-texts from the reported say- 
ings of Jesus, it is altogether out of harmony with Jesus' 
fundamental doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, and with 
the idea of forgiveness and of justification which natur- 
ally follows from this doctrine. The fundamental dif- 
ference between Jesus and Paul on this vital matter can- 
not be explained away. Jesus' doctrine is ethical and 
social, while Paul's doctrine is mechanical and individ- 
ualistic. The former doctrine relates itself directly to 
the building of the kingdom of God, while the latter does 
not. ~Eo one can take Jesus' doctrine seriously and not 
feel constrained to make constructive efforts to build a 
better world; but a man may take Paul's doctrine ser- 
iously and rest content with the sweet peace of mind that 
his sins are forgiven for Jesus' sake, and that his heavenly 
reward is sure. The two doctrines have an altogether 
different influence on the membership of the church and 
on the citizenship of the community. 

While the idea of the kingdom of God as a social order 
regenerated by brotherly love is not absent from the mind 
of Paul, it does not occupy the central place in his system 



Belation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 47 

that it did in tlie teachings of Jesus. ^ It is side-tracked 
while a speculative theology highly colored by Eabbinism, 
occupies the main track. St. Paul is in perfect agree- 
ment with Jesus in most respects, but he is not in agree- 
ment with him in the matter that was most fundamental 
in Jesus and that should have remained most fundamental 
in Christianity. It is a regrettable thing that the specu- 
lative Paul trained in Rabbinical dialectics, rather than 
the practical Jesus trained in the school of life, became 
the guide for all subsequent theologizing. 

Another potent factor in the displacement of Jesus and 
of the doctrine of the kingdom of God as a social order 
regenerated by brotherly love, was the subtle influence of 
Greek philosophy.^ The great minds that moulded the 
theology of the church after the Apostolic Age were, al- 
most without exception, men who were profoundly influen- 
ced by the conceptions and methods of Greek philosophy. 
Their conversion to Christianity, more especially since 
most of them were converted rather late in life^ — after 
their education was completed and their mental habits 
more or less fixed — could not uproot all their philoso- 
phical preconceptions, nor destroy their inborn love of 
dialectics. Many of the venerable church fathers were 
more Greek and less Christian than either they themselves 
or many of their biographers have imagined. Christian 
exegesis became largely a matter of dialectics in their 
hands. In Alexandria the Old Testament Scriptures had 
been recast under the influence of a religious Platonism 

^ In all his writings St. Paul refers to the kingdom of God 
only thirteen times, while in the few recorded sayings of Jesus 
there are no less than one hundred and eleven distinct references 
to the subject. 

2 I wish to take this opportunity to express my indebtedness to 
Professor William Romaine Newbold, of the University of Penn- 
sylvania, one of the foremost authorities on the later Greek 
philosophy, who was the first one to impress me with the extent 
to which Greek philosophy influenced Christian thought and 
practice. 



48 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

before Jesus was born. And the ISTew Testament did not 
escape this same influence. There is unmistakable evi- 
dence of Alexandrian influence in the Fourth Gospel. 
The plain prophet from J^azareth of Galilee was iden- 
tified with the pre-existent Logos of the Alexandrian 
philosophy. And the Alexandrian Logos doctrine was 
the grand-child of the older Platonic doctrine of the 
pre-existence of Ideas. In this way a purely Greek idea 
helped to displace Jesus the Founder of the kingdom of 
God by Jesus the pre-existent Savior. 

A thing that is worthy of special note is the fact that 
Paul, and not Jesus, furnished the material for the the- 
ologizing of the church fathers. The element in the 'New 
Testament that appealed least to the majority of the 
church fathers was the simple, ethical Gospel of Jesus. 
The Galilean prophet's ''good news" of the Fatherhood 
of God, and of the brotherhood world that is to follow 
from the fact of the divine Fatherhood, exerted little in- 
fluence on the dogmatizing of the philosophically inclined 
church fathers. But in the Epistles of Paul they found 
a rich mine to which to devote their dialectical skill. As 
the simple facts about Jesus were fused by St. Paul into 
a system in harmony with the conceptions and the term- 
inology of the sacrificial ritual of the Jews, so the essen- 
tial elements of Pauline theology were recast by the early 
church fathers under the influence of certain preconcep- 
tions of the later Greek philosophy. The result was a 
system of theology in which the prophetic doctrine of the 
kingdom of God had little or no place. It all happened 
unconsciously. In the case of the church fathers, as in 
the case of St. Paul, there was not the slightest thought of 
displacing Jesus, or the doctrine of the kingdom of God 
which was such a consuming passion with him. The 
church fathers were intensely loyal to Jesus — ready, like 
St. Paul, to be crucified anew with him; — but their 
loyalty did not prevent the submerging of the funda- 
mental principles and ideals of Jesus beneath a mass of 



Belation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 49 

speculations about the mysteries of his person and his 
death. ^ 

The influx from the East, first of Aristotelian and later 
of Platonic influences during the early part of the Middle 
Ages, left its further impress upon the theology and the 
practice of the church. Harnack has pointed out to what 
extent ^eo-Platonism, as it was originally developed in 
Alexandria, but more especially as it was elaborated later 
by Plotinus in Rome, from 244-270, has affected our 
Christian ideas and practices. Christianity had already 
been affected by the pronounced ascetic and anti-social 
tendency in Gnosticism, And now, through E'eo-Platon- 

^ For a brief statement of the social teachings of the church 
fathers, see: "The Social Gospel,'^ Crown Theological Library, 
1907, by Harnack and Herman ... It would be possible to select 
an array of proof texts from the teachings of the church fathers 
which might class them as men who shared the social passion of 
Amos and Micah. Quite recently I heard an address on the 
social teachings of the church fathers of the fourth and fifth 
centuries in which they were classed among the social prophets 
of the ages. The sayings which the speaker quoted from the 
fathers, if viewed by themselves, would justify the classification. 
It is true that no modem soap-box, socialist orator ever ex- 
pressed himself more radically on the subject of private prop- 
erty than some of the venerable church fathers did. But their 
radical attitude toward the accumulation of personal property 
was something essentially different from the attitude of men 
like Amos and Jesus. The church fathers were controlled by 
the ascetic or Greek conception of religion, and not by the 
social conception of the Hebrews and Jesus. Their attitude to- 
ward the grabbing and hoarding of goods was determined by 
their fear of the seductive influence of property on the in- 
dividual possessor, rather than by the conception of the moral 
value to society of a more equitable distribution of property. 
They advocated the giving of one's goods to the poor, not with 
the idea of bringing social health and well-being to the poor 
recipients, but for the sake of disciplining the soul of the giver. 
It is a very different kind of charitableness from that which 
is implied in Jesus' doctrine of the universal brotherhood of 
man. The church fathers' conception of charity is essentially 
individualistic, not social. It is not the kind of benevolence 
that will build the kingdom! of God, . . . 



50 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

ism, the conception of the dualism of matter and spirit, of 
body and soul, and the Platonic contempt for matter as the 
seat of all corruption, was still further impressed upon 
Christianity. This conception of matter and its relation 
to life finds no support in anything that is truly Hebrew 
or Christian. The prominent place which this Greek con- 
ception has held in the theology and practice of the 
Christian church has been prolific in its anti-social in- 
fluence in the world. It has kept the church from at- 
tempting her full duty to our physical and social life. 
Monachism, which, from this time on to the close of the 
fifteenth century, represented the very soul of the Christ- 
ian religion, was the logical expression of this un- 
christian view of matter and spirit. 

And not only was the Pauline interpretation of the 
Gospels rethought in conformity with certain philosophic 
preconceptions, but Christianity was still further modi- 
fied through its long and close association with the many 
other religions in the Koman empire. For more than two 
and a half centuries Christianity, Gnostidism, Mani- 
chseism, the pagan cult of Isis, and certain other pagan 
cults, were contending for the mastery of the Roman 
empire. We are well aware that the Hebrew religion 
was affected by its long and close association with the re- 
ligions of the Caananites and the surrounding tribes, and 
later through its contact with the religions of Babylon and 
Persia. And, in the same way and to a much greater 
extent than we have liked to admit, Christianity was in- 
fluenced and modified through its long association and 
competition with the other religions in the Roman empire. 
I do not believe, as some historians have claimed, that 
Christianity purposely incorporated some of the essential 
elements of these religions for the purpose of making the 
proselyting of their devotees easier. I believe that the 
assimilation took place unconsciously. But whether it 
happened consciously or unconsciously, we know that 
such an assimilation took place, and that the ultimate 



Belation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 51 

triumph of Christianity over all the other religions was, 
in some measure, due to this fact. 

There is no doubt that the worship of the virgin 
Mary, a practice that is absolutely foreign to the Hebrew 
mind, was a graft from the pagan cult of Isis, which 
had made its advent into the empire from Egypt about 
the year 86 b. c. It was Christianity's adaptation 
of itself to the need felt by many people in the 
'Homan empire for the recognition of the female 
principle in the idea of the Deity. The cult of 
Isis, of which the emperor Domitian was a priest, 
and which had held a prominent place in Eoman life for 
two and a half centuries, disappeared from the empire 
soon after imperial privilege had turned the tide in favor 
of Christianity. The devotees of Isis found no great 
difficulty in accepting Christianity because they found 
incorporated in it certain essential features of their own 
religion. Gnosticism, which for a long time was a most 
powerful rival of Christianity, also recognized the female 
principle in its conception of the Deity. Some of the 
religions with which Chrinstianity had to compete for 
its existence had their doctrine of the Trinity, of a pre- 
exi stent Deliverer, and of the virgin birth of a Savior. 
They all had their ablutions, or baptismal washings. 
Some of them had their sacred meal eaten in honor of 
and in the mystical presence of the gods. Everything 
that was Platonic was animated by an intense desire for 
personal immortality. While some of these ideas and 
practices existed, in germ, in the original teachings of 
Jesus, there is no doubt that they were given a place of 
prominence in historical Christianity that would not have 
been given them had they not held such a prominent place 
in the religions with which Christianity had to compete 
for more than two and a half centuries. 

It is a matter of quite general knowledge that some of 
our most cherished Christian festivals are of pagan origin. 
Christmas, with its many hallowed associations, occupies 



52 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

a tender place in every Christian's heart. We could not 
afford to lose its hallowing influence on our life. But 
our Christian Christmas is merely an adaptation of an 
ancient pagan festival originally suggested by the winter 
solstice. The very name Easter is a "shibboleth" that 
betrays the pagan descent of our second great Christian 
festival* There is no doubt at all about this. And pre- 
cisely as these festal days are a Christian assimilation 
and adaptation of pagan material, so also are many of 
those doctrines and practices which, for many centuries, 
have been made to represent the very soul of the Christian 
religion. Monasticism, asceticism, and the contempt for 
social life which assumed such gigantic proportions after 
ihe seventh and eighth centuries, show to what extent 
Gnosticism, Manichseism, and Neo-Platonism succeeded 
in obscuring the social ideals of Jesus and in diverting 
the church from her original duty of establishing 
the kingdom of God. These non-Christian accretions 
crowded the doctrine of the kingdom of God out of our 
Christian theology. 

From the days of Constantine Christianity began to 
suffer a more serious degeneration from an altogether dif- 
ferent source. This shrewd emperor was the first one 
to see that Christianity could not be destroyed by per- 
secution. He was convinced that it had made its way into 
the empire to stay. Instead of making further efforts to 
destroy it, as his predecessors had done, he sought a way 
of making it an ally of the empire; and he succeeded in 
his scheme to the lasting detriment of the true Christian 
religion. The illegitimate union of Christianity and 
Roman politics, which was begun by Constantine and com- 
pleted by his successors, was more detrimental to the 
cause of the kingdom of God than the combined influence 
of Greek philosophy and the pagan cults. The state 
favors which Christianity now received at once established 
its mastery over its former rivals. After the fourth 
century the church began to receive vast grants of land 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 53 

and large sums of money. In quick succession tlie 
churcli stepped from the dark caves of persecution into 
the limelight of imperial favor. And the thing affected 
her precisely as the sudden promotion from poverty and 
wretchedness to a position of wealth and honor affects 
some individuals. She lost first her head, and then her 
heart. In a short time the church, which had been called 
into existence for the purpose of extending the kingdom 
of brotherhood over all the earth, became the ally of the 
most corrupt and despotic state of all history. Instead 
of championing the cause of brotherhood and justice she 
now became an apologist for the despotism and the cor- 
ruption that had entrenched themselves in her political 
benefactor. Freed from her former poverty and exercis- 
ing the complete mastery of the religious situation in the 
empire, the Christian church forgot her holy mission. 
She now substituted herself for the kingdom of God. 
She henceforth became an end to be served, instead of a 
means of service. She developed a set of ecclesiastical 
machinery and elaborated a ritualistic program in com- 
parison with which the priestly program of the Jewish 
church in its palmiest days looked cheap. By means of 
the fiction of papal infallibility she placed her own teach- 
ing on an equality with that of Jesus himself. This was 
the final step in the gradual displacement of Jesus and 
his doctrine of the kingdom of God from the theology and 
the practice of the Christian church. 

By the end of the eighth century there was but little 
left of the principles and ideals of Jesus in the theology 
and the practice of the church. Jesus himself would not 
have recognized the majority of the doctrines and prac- 
tices that bore his name. Rauschenbusch says: "Im- 
agine Jesus, with the dust of Galilee on his sandals, com- 
ing into the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople in the 
fifth century, listening to the dizzy doctrinal definitions 
about the relation of the divine and the human in his 
nature, watching priests performing gorgeous acts of wor- 



54 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

ship, reciting long and set prayers, and offering his own 
mystical body as a renewed sacrifice to their God !" ^ 
Was there ever another teacher whose princ!iples and 
motives were so distorted and caricatured by his friends ? 

As religions educator the Catholic church was merely 
the custodian of this mass of doctrines and traditions, 
and of these priest-made plans of salvation, in which the 
ideals and the motives of the kingdom of God had little or 
no place- Religious education was merely the handing 
down from one generation to another of this mass of fixed 
opinions and practices many of which were altogether 
foreign to the mind and spirit of Jesus, and which the 
people had to believe without the right to question or in- 
vestigate for themselves. The indoctrinating of the 
people in the traditions and practices of the church, and 
the creating of a loyal attitude toward the priests and 
their system, is the fundamental aim and purpose of 
Catholic religious education even to-day. JSTeither in con- 
tent, spirit, purpose, nor method, is it tjie kind of reli- 
gious education that will inspire and qualify men for the 
establishing of the kingdom of God. 

Before there can be any real revival in religious edu- 
cation we must clear the archives of much that has been 
passed on to us as Christian, but which is not Christian 
either in content or in spirit. So long as it is made the 
business of religious education to perpetuate non-Christ- 
ian and anti-social doctrines and practices it may be a 
hindrance rather than a help in the establishing of the 
kingdom of God. Our theology must be rescued from the 
non-Christian elements in it before it will become a vital 
factor in the building of the kingdom of God. In the 
interest of a type of religious education that will fit men 
to do their duty in the matter of social regeneration, we 
must return to the spirit and the substance of the simple, 
human Gospel of the kingdom of God. 

^ Christianity and the Social Crisis, p. 94. 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 55 

(b). The return to the doctrine of the Mngdom of 
God in Christian theology. — Three historical movements 
have been slowly forcing the Christian church back to 
the fountain source from which she had wandered far. 
The first of these efforts to recover Christianity in its or- 
iginal purity was the Reformation of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. But the Protestant Reformation, while it freed 
Christian theology of many of the non-Christian accre- 
tions of Catholicism, did not recover the doctrine of the 
kingdom of God. The Reformation did not find its way 
back to Jesus. I^either Luther nor Calvin, the two dom- 
inating personalities of the Reformation movement, got 
beyond Augustine and Paul in their quest for the true 
Christian religion. Luther, like Paul, constructed his 
theological system out of his own personal experience. 
Luther was seeking peace of mind, which Catholic legal- 
ism failed to give him.. But what faith in the Catholic 
church could not give him, he finally found through faith 
in Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. His fundamen- 
tal doctrine of justification by faith alone was grounded 
in his own personal experience. The doctrine was forti- 
fied and elaborated, not by what Jesus said, but by what 
Paul said, who himself had a very similar experience. 
But neither Paul's nor Luther's experience was a normal 
religious experience. The thing, however, that concerns 
us especially in this discussion is the fact that the Lu- 
theran doctrine of justification by faith alone, like the 
Pauline doctrine of justification by divine grace without 
any human merit, will, if consistently carried out, de- 
velop a very different kind of Christian individual from 
'the one developed by Jesus' vital doctrine of justification 
by duty to our neighbor. The Lutheran and Pauline 
doctrines nurture a passive type of piety, while Jesus' 
doctrine nurtures an active piety. The fact that Paul 
and Luther were both very active and aggressive 
men was due to their native disposition and to the pecul- 



56 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

iar conditions under which they lived, and not to the fun- 
damental precepts of their theology. 

The monumental work of John Calvin was an intellec- 
tual effort to reconcile the new spirit of individualism, 
which for a century or more had been struggling for ex- 
pression in Europe and which could no longer be sup- 
pressed, with the inherited idea of divine sovereignty as 
it had been developed under the old political system of 
monarchy and autocracy. An old type sovereign God 
and a new type democratic individual seem, to me, to be 
the foci of the Calvinistic system of theology. The sys- 
tem revolves around these two irreconcilable principles, 
while the world of Jesus revolves around the one control- 
ling thought of the divine Fatherhood. Calvin's doctrine 
of predestination is unthinkable in connection with Jesus' 
^^good news" of the universal Fatherhood of God. ISTo 
theologian who would have taken Jesus and the prophets 
instead of Paul and Augustine as his guides, and Jesus' 
conception of the divine Fatherhood instead of the me- 
disevai idea of divine sovereignty as his norm, could have 
written the Institutes of John Calvin. Calvin's social 
service in Geneva was in spite of his theology, rather than 
because of it. The sixteenth century Reformation was 
an ecclesiastical reformation with little thought of social 
reformation. 

The Anabaptists have seldom been mentioned apart 
from the purpose of criticism and obloquy. But they 
were the only Reformation party that seemed to realize 
that the spirit and teachings of Jesus implied social re- 
construction as well as ecclesiastical reconstruction. 
They may have been wrong as to the particular type of 
social order which they thought was implied in the prin- 
ciples of Jesus, and which they attempted to realize. But, 
be that as it may, they were the only party that realized 
that a radical reconstruction of the social order was as 
much a part of tha kingdom-program as the radical 
reconstruction of the church. There were some fanatics 



Belation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 57 

among them no doubt. Great ideals have a tendency to 
make fanatics. There may have been revolutionists 
among them who advocated the use of the sword, just 
as there have always been extremists who would usher 
in new eras by means of physical force. And it is not 
unlikely that there were some lewd and immoral fellows 
among them. But the same charge of immorality that 
was made against the Anabaptists has been made against 
every other class of people who have mingled with each 
other in a specially close and fraternal way. The same 
charge of sexual immorality was made against the early 
Christians in the Eoman empire, and against the early 
Methodists in England and in our own country. The fact 
of the matter is that the Anabaptists were persecuted 
and exterminated for the same reason that Jesus was cru- 
cified. They were persecuted and finally wiped out be- 
cause they preached and practiced a Gospel that would 
have disrupted the old corrupt social order if they had 
been left to go on unmolested. 

The sixteenth century Protestant theology was a recon- 
struction of Catholic theology under the constraining im- 
pulse of the new spirit of individualism. But Paul and 
Augustine, and not Jesus of Nazareth, served as guides 
in the process of reconstruction. Many of the Catholic 
traditions and practices were eliminated, but the doctrine 
of the kingdom of God was not recovered. In time, the 
different branches of Protestantism summed up their par- 
ticular views in certain articles of Faith, or Confession, 
which became authoritative for their followers down to 
our own day. Protestant religious education has not dif- 
fered very radically either in substance, spirit, purpose, 
or method, from Catholic education. It has consisted 
essentially of information in regard to the tenets and prac- 
tices of particular denominations and sects, and of in- 
formation in the Scriptures from a particular sectarian 
angle. The aim and purpose of our Protestant religious 
education is still very largely the perpetuating of a par- 



58 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

ticular view of the Scriptures and the creating of a loyal 
attitude toward the denomination, rather than the creating 
of the Christian attitude toward life. Eeligious educa- 
tion must be delivered from its long bondage to sectarian- 
ism before it will become a vital factor in the building of 
the kingdom of God. 

The second movement that rendered pioneer service in 
swinging the church back to the position that gave her 
birth was the historico-critical spirit in theology, which 
began with Schleiermacher's Reden uher die re- 
ligion, and his Glauhenslehre. The scientific spirit in 
theology has accomplished at least two things. 

In the first place, it has taken us back to the Scriptural 
sources. It has delivered us from our long enslavement 
to the theology of the church fathers and the reformers. 
It has unbarred the doors to the Holy of Holies, and has 
given us the courage to investigate for ourselves. It has 
applied to the Scriptures the same historical method with 
which we study other litej-ature. It has made a scientific 
study of the authors of the Scriptures and of the times in 
which they lived. It has analyzed the religious, the his- 
torical, and the psychological forces that moulded them 
and that gave occasion for and significance to their mes- 
sage. The critical study has made it clear that the au- 
thors of the Scriptures were human beings like ourselves ; 
and that the Scriptures are the interpretation of their ex- 
perience of God and of life. It has shown the Scrip- 
tures to be a mass of individual and social ex- 
periences and opinions, of traditions and customs, which 
have come down to us from many different sources and 
covering many centuries of time. 

In the second place, the critical method of exegesis has 
shown us that distinctly different strata run through the 
Scriptures such as the Prophetic, the Lelgaistic and the 
Priestly in the Old Testament; the Synoptic and the 
Johannine elements in the Gospels; and the Pauline and 
the General Epistles. It has convinced us that the au- 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 59 

thors of the Scriptures were not all equally inspired, and 
that the different portions of the Scriptures are therefore 
not all equally valuable for edification or equally im- 
portant for doctrine. The different strata which run 
through the Scriptures are not all of the same moral and 
religious excellence. In other words, the critical method 
of study has broken the evil spell which the fictitious doc- 
trine of the verbal and infallible inspiration of all the 
Scriptures had cast over the church for many centuries. 
This doctrine, when taken seriously, makes faith in the 
swimming of Elisha's ax, or in the sun's obedience to 
the command of Joshua, as important as faith in the 
social ideals of the Sermon on the Mount. It places the 
Song of Solomon on the same moral plane as the book of 
Amos. It values proof-texts from Hebrews and Revela- 
tion as highly as Micah's precept that we do justly, and 
love mercy, and walk humbly before our God. For many 
centuries the doctrine of the infallible inspiration of all 
the Scriptures kept the church from seeing that there is 
any difference between the theology of Paul and the reli- 
gion of Jesus. The critical spirit has rendered invaluable 
service by encouraging us to make an ethical rather than 
a mechanical selection of Scriptural material as the basis 
of our theologizing. It has helped us to see that some 
elements in the Old Testament are more Christian than 
some in the !N'ew Testament. 

By breaking away from the theology of the church 
fathers and the reformers and leading us back to the 
Scriptural sources ; and by proving the ethical superiority 
of certain portions of the Scriptures over others, the criti- 
cal theology has helped to clear the ground for the re- 
discovery of the doctrine of the kingdom of God. It is 
in the manuals of the critical theology that we for the 
first time find the subject matter so arranged as to make 
the idea of the kingdom of God the governing principle. 
In the voluminous works of the old theology the kingdom 
of God received but scant recognition, usually in connec- 



60 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

tion witli tlie lengthy discussions on escliatology. There 
is no connection between the old theological conception 
of the kingdom of God and the doctrine of personal sal- 
vation. The thought that the salvation of the individual 
is wrapped up in the salvation of society, or in the com- 
ing of the kingdom of God, we find for the first time in 
the theological manuals of the critical theology. 

However the critical spirit which was manifested in 
theology since the appearance of Schleiermacher's epoch- 
making works in 1834, remained too academic to exert a 
wide influence. " It captured only a few choice minds 
here and there in the church. It did not seriously dis- 
turb the laity in the church. It was a movement of the 
learned. The few critical theological manuals which 
made the kingdom of God the governing idea were, as a 
rule, written in such academic style and terminology as 
to make them incomprehensible to the average reader. 
The critical spirit did not become a popular movement 
such as is necessary to force so great and so conservative 
a body as the Christian church out of its conventional 
rut. 

We are at this moment witnessing the third historical 
movement that is forcing the church back to Jesus Christ 
and his passion for the kingdom of God. It is the new so- 
cial spirit that is struggling everywhere for expression. 
As the individualism, which broke up the Mediaeval so- 
cial order, had its origin outside of the church but found 
its way into the church, so this new social spirit, which 
is shaking the present social order to its very foundations, 
had its origin outside of the church but is finding its way 
into the church, l^othing since the days of the Pro- 
testant Eeformation has so profoundly affected the world 
and the church as the social awakening of the last two de- 
cades. It is not confined to the study rooms of a few 
professors, as the critical spirit was; but is profoundly 
affecting everybody in the church and everybody outside 
of the church. It is a great popular movement, perhaps 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 61 

not fully conscious of its purpose and goal, but at heart 
a moral movement — a feeling after brotherhood and jus- 
tice. At a time like this the church must undertake the 
program of the kingdom of God or be stampeded by the 
social forces outside of her pale. Our age will turn a deaf 
ear to any but the social Gospel ; and the only theology 
that will support the social Gospel is the one that is 
grounded in the religion of the kingdom of God. The 
church must teach the religion of the kingdom of God or 
find, sooner or later, that her mission and her privilege 
have been taken from her and given to others who will 
teach the religion of the kingdom. 

The fundamental purpose of a genuinely Christian 
religious education is to inject the principles, the ideals, 
and the motives of the kingdom of God into individuals, 
into organizations and institutions. Its purpose is to in- 
spire in individuals and in society the truly Christian 
attitude toward life, — the filial attitude toward God, the 
fraternal attitude toward man, and the morally purposive 
attitude toward things. 'No other religious subject mat- 
ter than that which is implied in the Christian conception 
of the kingdom of God will satisfy the unconscious soul- 
hunger of the age. And no other motive than the estab- 
lishing of the kingdom of God can enlist men and 
women of the type and character who will put an adequate 
program of religious education into effect in our day. 

Her message, in the next place, the church must de- 
liver in the vernacular of the age. She must speak in the 
language and terminology of the people. She must adapt 
her message to the intellectual world and to the social 
world that have come into existence since our Protestant 
theology became a finished product. 

The Church must adapt her Message to the Intellectual 
World of To-day. — ^Rot only have a number of non-Chris- 
tian elements become incorporated with Christianity, but 
this mixture of Christian and non-Christian material was 



62 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

fused into a finished system under tlie dominance of 
scientific and philosophic world-views which have long 
since been outgrown. By attempting to pass on from 
generation to generation a fixed system of theology, with- 
out proper regard for the progress that was made in the 
other departments of life, the church has been sacrificing 
that mental point of contact with her constituency which 
is so essential to successful teaching. She made the mis- 
take of attempting to perpetuate a static system of thought 
in a dynamic world. 

With Copernicus in science, and with Bruno in philoso- 
phy, a new intellectual world was born which is quite 
different, in spirit and in content, from the intellectual 
world of the old Ptolemaic order. The heliocentric 
theory of the universe gradually displaced the old geocen- 
tric theory. A new conception of space revolutionized 
thought. The experimental work of Darwin, LaPlace, 
DeVries, Spencer, Huxley, and a host of others, com- 
pletely demolished the old intellectual world-order under 
which the church's theology became fixed and sealed 
against future change. Zoology, botany, chemistry, and 
biology, especially biology, have rewritten the world's 
history since the last authoritative Confession of the 
church was put upon the theological market. The hy- 
potheses of these pioneers in science and philosophy have 
been verified, so far as present practical purposes are con- 
cerned, by the telescope, the microscope, and the test- 
tube. The new intellectual conception of the universe, 
and the new theories of growth and development, have 
found their way not only into the university and the col- 
lege, but into the high school, and down to the plain man 
in the shop and on the street. The doctrine of evolution, 
or the idea of the progressive unfolding of the world's life 
according to calculable laws and principles, has become al- 
most an axiom with the men who are shaping the world's 
intellectual life. 

But while these epoch-making changes were going on 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 63 

in the world's intellectual life, the church, for the most 
part, remained stationary. The Catholic church stead- 
fastly opposed the new science and the new philosophy. 
The Catholic church refused to adjust herself by one jot 
or tittle to the revolutionary changes that were being 
wrought. When the foundations of the old intellectual 
order began to totter, she defended her static position on 
the gTOund of the infallibility of the Scriptures, which 
were supposed to support the old order and which were 
considered the final authority in matters of astronomy 
and geology no less than in matters of religion. ^^Are 
not the holy Scriptures infallibly inspired ?" asked the 
church. ^'And do not the Scriptures tell us that God 
made the universe in six days, and that the sun moves, 
and that the earth stands still? Who will dare to match 
the views of Copernicus or Bruno against the infallible 
utterances of the Scriptures ?" But the scientists and 
the philosophers, inspired by a sense of the truth, kept 
on promulgating the new views. As a last resort the 
church used the weapons of intimidation, anathema, ex- 
communication, and in some cases even torture and mur- 
der. The Catholic church closed her doors against the 
men whose progressive views failed to square with her 
static theology. 

The Protestant church, whose theology was cast in the 
thought-moulds of the old cosmological order, was very 
slow, in some sections quite reluctant, to recast her the- 
ological conceptions in the new thought-moulds that came 
into common use during the eighteenth and the nine- 
teenth centuries. When Darwin popularized the doctrine 
of evolution only certain progressive elements here and 
there in the Protestant church were ready to give it a 
fair hearing. The great majority of Protestants as well 
as Catholics considered the doctrine a contradiction of 
the Scriptural view of creation and development. On 
this ground the doctrine was opposed by the majority of 
churchmen, both Protestant and Catholic. In the pre- 



64 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

face to his famous essay on Automatism, Huxley re- 
fers sarcastically to "the monotonous drum-beats of the 
heresy hunters." He mentions the Presbyterians as be- 
ing especially aggressive in the campaign against the 
heretical innovations of the new science. 

But the church, in her uncompromising attitude, was 
unmindful of the fact that the Scriptures, which she was 
defending against the heresies of the new science, were 
themselves an adaptation of religious faith to a philo- 
sophical world-view. The pious author of Genesis read 
his ideas of God and of creation into the crude cosmo- 
logical conceptions of his age. Jesus poured his religious 
convi<3ltions into the prevajilivng thought-moulds of his 
day. St. Paul built his theological system squarely upon 
the Rabbinical world-view of his time. And, similarly, 
the Confessional Statements of the Reformation period 
were all made in conformity with the cosmological pre- 
suppositions of the Ptolemaic world-view which, in some 
respects, differed radically from the crude views of Gen- 
esis, and also from the views of the Rabbinical school of 
St. Paul's time. The church was honest when she took 
the field against the new science. She was as sincere as 
Paul was when he attempted to serve the interests of true 
religion by wiping out the new heresy of Jesus of ITaz- 
areth. The church was sincere in her belief that the 
demolition of the old cosmological conceptions involved 
the destruction of religion itself. But honestj^ will not 
atone for a lack of historical orientation and progressive- 
ness. In spite of her vehement protests the world kept 
right on accepting the new views. The church's efforts to 
check the spread of the new science were as fruitless as 
the efforts of a certain lady of fiction who attempted to 
sweep back the tides of the Atlantic Ocean with her 
broom. 

The conflict between the church and the pioneers of the 
new science was detrimental to both sides of the question. 
On the one hand, it resulted in the loss to the church 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 65 

of the men wlio have been most influential in the intellect- 
ual life of the modern world. The men who were the real 
leaders in the intellectual progress of the last three or 
four centuries were, for the most part, found outside of 
the church. They were given the choice between denying 
their intellectual convictions or leaving the church; and, 
being honest men, they took the latter course. This fact 
is to be lamented all the more because the break between 
the church and the scientists could have been avoided if 
the theologians had been imbued with the historical spirit 
and with the tolerance which usually accompanies that 
spirit. The pioneers of the new science did not want to 
leave the church. They were forced out. Copernicus 
did not publish his works for twelve years for fear of 
offending the church. Bruno, who was more bold, paid 
the price of his life for his rashness. A host of others 
suffered reproach and social martrydom for their scien- 
tific and philosophic convictions. 

On the other hand, science and philosophy suffered be- 
cause of their divorce from religion^ Because of this 
rupture, science and philosophy pursued their course with- 
out the constraining and leavening influence of religion. 
This is at least one reason for the materialistic and the 
atheistic tendency in our modern science and philosophy. 
There is no God in the prevailing scientific and philo- 
sophic world-views — no God but blind motion, or blind 
energy, or unconscious creativity — because there was no 
one to fill the new world-views, as they were in the pro- 
cess of formation, with the idea of an imminently creative 
and a morally purposive God. 

The days of open warfare between the church and 
science are over. The church no longer has the power nor 
the desire to burn at the stake the honest seeker after 
truth, whose conclusions may happen to differ from her 
own. But that mutual trust and respect, and that spirit 
of cooperation, that should exist between these two great 
agencies, are still lacking. The church is still tacitly, 



66 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

if not openly, discouraging the free spirit of investigation 
which is so characteristic of the modern university in gen- 
eral, and of the laboratory in particular. A man in the 
church must still fear to express his honest convictions on 
many subjects — convictions that have come after the most 
honest and conscientious study. In the degree that the 
church discourages free investigation in the interest of 
truth, she holds herself aloof from the intellectual spirit 
that is most characteristic of the modern world. Many 
of our theological seminaries are still committed to the 
theology that was finished and sealed under the domin- 
ance and control of the scientific presuppositions which 
modern men have outgrown. Some whole denominations 
still live in the theological world of the sixteenth century. 
In the public school room a text book becomes old after 
a few seasons of use, and in many cases antiquated in ten 
years; while in our catechetical classes we are still using 
text books that were written three hundred and fifty years 
ago when the conceptions and ideals with which we must 
inspire our age were unrecognized. These ancient books 
are still recognized as standard Confessions for the church. 
In some cases they have become invested with the sanctity 
of infallibility, thus forcing the use of them upon us long 
after their usefulness has ended. Great as these cat- 
echisms are, judged by 'the religious and intellectual 
standards of the age that produced them, and precious 
as they are today as historical heritages, it is a peda- 
gogic crime to continue using them as authoritative text 
books for religious instruction. They do not meet the 
requirements of our age. The church cannot meet her 
obligations as religious educator by the use of confessional 
standards which are altogether out of gear with the intel- 
lectual spirit and machinery of our modern life. 

In this way the church has been losing her point of 
contact with the intellectual life of the age. We have 
been sacrificing the interest of the men and the women 
who are trained in the philosophic and scientific methods 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 67 

of study. The men who are animated hy the free inves- 
tigative spirit, which is so characteristic of the modern 
university, chafe under the dogmatic spirit of the church. 
In the university our investigation of any matter is en- 
couraged, and our contribution to the subject, if we have 
the ability to make any, is welcomed with delight. But 
in the church everything is fixed and settled for us. We 
have no choice but to accept it, or place ourselves under 
suspicion. We are educating many of our brightest 
young people away from the church each year. They go 
away from our homes without ever having questioned the 
teachings of the Sunday school or the catechetical class. 
They never analyzed the contents of their religious faith. 
They accepted what somebody told them to accept. But 
in the university they are encouraged to investigate every- 
thing, and to place a question mark after many things. 
They are taught to analyze their psychological experience, 
and to weigh the evidence for their minds or souls. After 
four years spent in the schools they come back to us with 
a changed attitude toward the things which once they 
were taught to accept without question. We may censure 
the schools for wandering too far afield in their free in- 
vestigation of everything from the nature and behavior of 
electrons to the nature and behavior of the individual 
soul and of Almighty God Himself. We may try to save 
the situation by persuading our boys and girls to 
go to their respective church schools where it may 
happen that neither their religious faith nor their 
intellectual life is seriously affected. But the fundamen- 
tal difficulty involved in the misunderstanding between 
religion and science will not be remedied by censuring 
science, or by renewed efforts to educate our youths be- 
hind closed denominational fences. The issues involved 
in the long conflict between religion and science will not 
be concluded satisfactorily until both science and religion 
will learn to understand their respective functions, and 
to respect each other's respective fields. 



68 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

There is no need for any fundamental antagonism 
between religion and science, between the university ai^d 
tbe church. There is no excuse for an irreligious science, 
or for an unscientific theology. The fundamental busi- 
ness of science is to investigate the phenomena of nature 
and of life for the purpose of a practical understanding 
of them.' The fundamental business of religion is to 
inspire individuals and society with a moral attitude 
toward the facts of nature and the problems of life for 
the purpose of realizing the highest individual and social 
ends. Between these two fundamental disciplines there is 
no contradiction and no occasion for antagonism. When 
religion attempts to deal with cosmological speculations, 
it leaves its distinct field and surrenders its real function. 
When science scorns, or dogmatically denies, the funda- 
mental assumptions which religion makes in the interest 
of the highest moral and social ends it too leaves its 
distinct field and surrenders its real function. We must 
delegate to science and philosophy the investigation and 
explanation of natural, social, and mental phenomena, so 
far as they can be determined by calculable laws and 
principles. But we must look to religion to invest these 
phenomena with moral significance, and to relate them to 
moral and social ends and purposes. It is the function 
of science to determine our intellectual world-view; but 
it is the business of religion to fill whatever world-view 
we may accept for the time being with the moral pur- 
posiveness of the God of Jesus Christ. World-views and 
theories of becoming are not fixed notions, sealed against 
all future change, as our theological notions have been. 
They are, at best, only relative and tentative. They are 
only modes of explanation. Later discoveries may dis- 
prove what we now hold to be almost axiomatic. Histori- 
cal study has made it clear that the world-views, under 
which our theology shaped itself into a finished system, 
changed several times. Some future world-view may 
differ radically from the one which is now dominating 



Eelation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 69 

the minds of men. It is in the nature of progress to 
expect that it will be so. 

But amid all these changes the unchanging purpose of 
religion is to fill with the moral purposiveness of the God 
of Jesus Christ the particular world-view that has 
captured the thought of mankind. The welfare of indi- 
viduals and of society demands this. It really does not 
matter, from a moral point of view, whether we believe 
that God made the world by a single creative fiat or by 
a slow process of evolution, so long as we believe that a 
good God is creatively active in the world. It does not 
matter, from a moral point of view, whether we believe 
that God made the world in six ordinary days or in six 
million years, so long as we believe that God is in the 
world, working in and through natural, moral, and social 
agencies for the accomplishment of such ends as are im- 
plied in the doctrine of the kingdom of God. In this 
sense there is no reason for any misunderstanding or 
mistrust between science and religion, between the church 
and the university. The church can declare the funda- 
mental principles of the kingdom of God in harmony with 
the accepted intellectual conceptions of the age. What 
she cannot do is to perpetuate the cosmology of Genesis, 
or of the sixteenth century, in the twentieth century. 
And it is not the business of religious education to 
do that. 

The Church Must Adapt Her Message to the Social 
World of Today. — IS^ot only has a new intellectual world 
come into existence since our theology became a finished 
product, but also a new social world, which is placing new 
responsibilities upon the church. In the age when our 
religious conceptions assumed their present form, social 
relationships were few and simple. When the great Con- 
fessions which are still the standards of faith for the church 
were written, 90% of all the people in every Protes- 
tant community in the world lived in the open country, 



70 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

where each family was practically a world unto itself. 
But as great a change has taken place in the social world 
as that which we just noticed in the intellectual world. 
The discovery of mechanical power, the invention of 
labor saving machinery, and other economic and social 
factors, have caused a rapid flux of the population from 
the country into the cities and towns. To-day 51.9% of 
the people of the United States live in communities of 
upwards of 2,500 people, while 25% of our people live in 
the cities of upwards of 100,000 inhabitants. Division 
of labor has been carried to the point where multitudes 
of people from the remotest sections of the earth con- 
tribute to the needs of each family's everyday life. Our 
social life has become a matter of multitudinous relation- 
ships and of a complicated interdependence. 

The following clipping from the Oklahoma State 
Register shows to what extent our everyday life, even 
in the remotest country districts, has become related to 
and dependent upon people who are far removed from us 
in distance. ^'The average Oklahoma fanner gets up at 
the alarm of a Connecticut clock; buttons his Chicago 
suspenders to his Detroit overalls; washes his face with 
Cincinnati soap in a Pennsylvania pan; sits down to a 
Grand Rapids table; eats Chicago meat and Minnesota 
flour, cooked with Texas cottolene, on a Sears-Roebuck 
stove; puts a JSTew York bridle upon a Missouri mule 
fed with California alfalfa; ploughs a farm covered with 
a Vermont mortgage, with an Illinois plow. When bed 
time comes he reads a chapter from a Bible printed in 
Boston, crawls under a blanket made in New Jersey, 
only to be kept awake by an Oklahoma dog, the only home 
product on the place." The article from which this clip- 
ping is taken was written for the purpose of encouraging 
home industry in Oklahoma; but it incidentally shows to 
what extent our everyday life has become linked up with 
the life and the labors of multitudes of people whom we 
do not know, but to whom we owe a brother's considera- 



Belatian of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 71 

tion and a brother's duty. These social relationships, 
and this complicated interdependence of our life, create 
moral and religious problems which former ages, when 
every farmer was his own butcher, and baker, and candle- 
stick maker, did not know. 

In this new social world all the cardinal virtues not 
only require a wider application, but become invested 
with a moral significance which they did not have and 
could not have in the old order of fewer and simpler 
relationships. The common virtues of honesty, justice, 
truthfulness, mercy, temperance, purity, etc., become in- 
vested with a significance in this new world of multitudi- 
nous and far-reaching relationships which they did not 
have in the old world-order. So far as social consequences 
are concerned it would not matter what kind of man a 
Robinson Crusoe on his lonely island might be. In his 
heart of hearts he might be covetous, revengeful, lustful, 
and mean. So long as he lives alone on his island empire 
no young girls will be outraged by his lust, and no neigh- 
bors will be injured by his unsocial disposition. But 
in a world of such inescapable relationships as ours, it 
matters everything what kind of individuals we are. 
When the making of a can of adulterated pork and beans 
in Boston may poison a family out on the Pacific coast; 
and when a single vote in the Board of Directors' meeting 
in Wall Street, 'New York City, may set in motion forces 
that will ultimately affect 100,000,000 people all over the 
country, the common virtues of honesty and benevolence 
receive a significance which they could not have in any 
other age of history. A group of selfish employers bent 
upon perpetuating their autocratic power and their big 
dividends; or a group of class-conscious laborers deter- 
mined to show who is boss in industry, may precipitate a 
conflict that will affect not only this particular group of 
laborers and their employers, but the citizenship of the 
whole country. Never before in the history of the human 
race was it so necessary to declare in simple, forceful 



72 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

language the fundamental Christian fact that we are all 
brothers, and that we must treat one another as brothers, 
not only in the prayer-meeting, but in all our relation- 
ships and dealings with one another. 

And not only has our individual life become linked up 
with the lives of countless other individuals, but certain 
social creatures have made their appearance which put 
an added strain upon the common virtues. Certain super- 
personal creatures have come into existence in the new 
social atmosphere which might be as much of a curiosity 
to the citizens of the ancient social order as the mastodons 
of past geological ages are to us. Our trusts and corpora- 
tions with their voracious appetites for profit and divi- 
dends — an appetite that has never yet been known to be 
satisfied, for the more they get the hungrier they are; 
these strange creatures which have neither body, mind, 
nor will of their own, and yet exercise almost infinite 
power — power over their competitors and power over 
governments; these seemingly indestructible creatures 
which have frequently been dismembered, dissolved, and 
legally declared dead, and yet continue to do business 
without any visible effects of the dissolution, showing just 
as much power, and manifesting even a keener appetite 
for profit than before ; these strange creatures bred in the 
social atmosphere of the last half century are as marvel- 
lous as any freak or monster of the land or the sea or 
the air of any geological age of history. The common 
virtues of honesty, of good will, and of fair play receive a 
new significance when applied to these super-personal crea- 
tures, which have neither bodies to be kicked nor souls 
to be damned. The greater the ability and the power of 
an institution, — and the less personal responsibility it 
bears, — the more imperatively necessary it is that we 
endeavor to christianize it in its inner purposes and in 
its outward practices. 

The business of present day religious education is not 
only to inspire individuals with the ideals- and the prin- 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 73 

ciples of the kingdom of God, but also to inspire these 
great and powerful super-personal entities to govern them- 
selves in conformity with these same ideals. One of the 
greatest needs of our age is a new type of conscience, — 
a conscience in individuals and in institutions that recog- 
nizes our sacred obligations and responsibilities to all 
other individuals, and to all groups of individuals, with 
whom our life and our interests are so intricately wrapped 
up. If the church will fail to develop this conscience she 
will fail in one of her paramount duties. And I fear 
that, up to this time, we have not met this obligation. 
Our theology has not been of the kind to inspire the social 
conscience. Our preaching, while it has been honest and 
sincere, has failed to make our religious conscience func- 
tion adequately in our social life. 

Eauschenbusch gives the striking instance of a devout 
Mennonite farmer, who swore a worldly oath when he was 
arrested by the Toronto Board of Health for leaving cow 
dung in his milk cans. This sinful individual was 
brought before his congregation and excluded from their 
fellowship. However, not for leaving cow dung in his 
milk cans, which endangered the lives of Toronto's babies ; 
but for swearing a worldly oath. ISTeither this individual 
nor his congregation was concerned about the health of the 
city, which was being jeopardized by the filthy milk. 
The only thing that concerned the authorities of the 
church was that this man had taken the name of the Lord 
in vain. Taking the name of the Lord in vain is wrong ; 
but there are greater wrongs than this. ISTot until the 
church will make her members feel that leaving filth in 
milk cans, or watering milk, which undermines the health 
of human beings, is a worse sin than profane swearing, 
the social order will not be christianized. 

The case of the Mennonite farmer may be unique, but it 
is not exceptional. The churches of all denominations 
are full of people who keep their religious conscience and 
their business conscience in two different compartments 



74 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

of their being. All our churches have their pious mem- 
bers who would not swear a profane oath, or play a game 
of cards, or attend a dance, but who will water the milk 
which they sell to their neighbors. All our churches 
have their seemingly good and honest people who would 
not think of watering milk, but who will not hesitate to 
water the stock of their corporation or monopoly, which is 
a greater sin than watering milk. Our churches are full 
of people whose religion does not enter vitally into their 
dealings with their fellow men — particularly not into 
their business dealings. The kingdom of God has been 
seriously obstructed by this inconsistency. And the 
fault may be more that of the church than of the people. 
The Mennonite church in Toronto was more guilty than 
the individual member whom she disciplined. The 
church has not made it a primary purpose to relate our 
religion to our dealings with our neighbors. Our preach- 
ing has not directly aimed at the creation of a public 
conscience that is as keen and as sensitive as our private 
conscience, and a business conscience that is as Christian 
as our church conscience. 

How generally we have failed to relate our religion to 
our social life was shown by the recent report of the Com- 
mission on the War and the Eeligious Outlook. On the 
2nd of April, 1918, the Federal Council of the Churches 
of Christ in America and the General War Time Com- 
mission of the Churches appointed a Special Commission 
on the War and the Religious Outlook. The purpose of 
this special commission was ^'to consider the state of re- 
ligion as revealed or affected by the war with special 
reference to the duty and the opportunity of the churches, 
and to prepare its findings for submission to the churches." 
In speaking of the findings of this commission, the chair- 
man. Dr. William Adams Brown, says : ^There is just one 
point in connection with the religion of these young men 
(i. e., the young men who served in the world war and 
whose conception of religion was studied by this commis- 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 75 

sion) to which I desire to call attention, and that is this 
— that the great body of truths which center about the 
central conception of our Lord's teaching, viz., the king- 
dom of God, are conspicuous by their absence. I will 
not say (God forbid that I should say) that the ideal of 
unselfish social service was not present in the life of these 
young men, but I can say with confidence that it was not 
associated in their minds with that for which the church 
of Jesus Christ stands. Here surely is a situation which 
needs the earnest consideration not only of every minister, 
but particularly of those who are shaping the program 
of the church's religious education." ^ The findings of 
this commission furnish material for serious reflection. 
In the degree that the church fails to associate her message 
and her ministry with the ideals of unselfish service to 
our fellow men she fails in her first duty. 

And not only has the church very generally failed to 
inject the kingdom-ideal of unselfish service into her indi- 
vidual membership, but she has failed to a still greater 
degree to inject this ideal of the Master into our great 
institutions — into our stock companies, our political 
parties, and the nations of the earth. Until very re- 
cently, the church made no effort to leaven our corporate 
life with the motives of Jesus. During the most plastic 
period of the new world, the church was busying herself 
with the old task of cultivating individual piety, with only 
here and there a timid reference to our social and cor- 
porate duties and responsibilities. The church did not 
fight the advent of the new social world as she did that 
of the new intellectual world. In fact, until the world 
war shocked her out of her stupor, she did not seem to 
be aware that a new social world was growing up around 
her. As a consequence of the church's belated social 
awakening, the new social world, like the new intellectual 
world before it, has been growing up without being in- 

^From an article by Dr. WilHam Adams Brown, in the 
Christian Herald, May 14, 1921. 



76 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

fluenced in any adequate degree by the ideals and prin- 
ciples of the kingdom of God. The horrible world war, 
the present titanic conflict between capital and labor, and 
the social revolutions and the general unrest that are 
rocking the whole social order from South Africa to 
Siberia, and from China to America, are all evidence of 
the lack of influence that our desocialized religion has 
had on our social life. 

Religious education fails — and the church fails — unless 
the social ideals and principles of the kingdom of God are 
made to function in our social and corporate life. 

Will the Church Rise to the Occasion? — If the church 
is to meet the obligations which religious education in 
an intellectual and social atmosphere like ours puts upon 
her, some radical readjustments must take place in her 
educational program. These readjustments must be- 
gin at the fountain sources — in the curricula and the 
teaching forces of our theological seminaries. Too few 
of our theological seminaries have made adequate efforts 
to adapt their program to the needs of the age. The 
curriculum of the average theological seminary to-day 
is practically what it was two hundred years ago. As 
a consequence of this mal-adjustment many of the young 
men who leave our theological institutions are poorly pre- 
pared for the ministry which our age demands of them. 
They are indoctrinated in world-views and in conceptions 
of growth and development which our age has outlived, 
and which no amount of earnestness can make appeal to 
the men and the women who are leading the way in the 
social progress of to-day. Many of them know the history 
of the ancient world better than they understand the 
spirit of the city in which they live. They may be able 
to analyze the different documents which make up the 
Old Testament, but they have not been prepared to analyze 
the mind and the spirit of the age to which they are to 
minister. Professor Shailer Mathews, of the Theological 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 77 

Department of the University of Chicago, says in one of 
his recent books that our students for the ministry are 
prepared to read Hebrew, but that they are not prepared 
to read the signs of the times. We may question Dr. 
Mathews' statement that our students for the ministry 
are prepared to read Hebrew, but we agree with him that 
many of them are not prepared to read the signs of the 
times. And an educational institution that fails to pre- 
pare its students to read the signs of the times, fails in 
one of its most fundamental duties. Men who cannot 
read the signs of the times cannot serve the times. Such 
men are mere ciphers in the stern struggle for a better 
world. Until reconstruction begins here at the fountain 
sources, — until it begins with the preparation of our 
young men for the ministry, — religious education will 
not make any substantial progress. Reconstruction in the 
educational progi*am of our theological seminaries would, 
in a generation or two, mean a reconstruction in the 
working theology of the average preacher. 

It is a hopeful sign that some of our theological semi- 
naries are finding their way out of the conventional rut, 
and are making thoughtful efforts to reconstruct their 
program so as to meet the demands which the intel- 
lectual and the social changes of the last half century 
have been making upon us. These progressive institu- 
tions do not fear to welcome into the field of theology 
the investigating spirit which is so characteristic of modern 
education. They have disabused their minds of the mis- 
conception that truth is primarily a matter of definitions 
— something that can be stated in intellectual formulas 
and sealed against future changes, as we preserve fruits 
and vegetables in sealed jars. They recognize the fact 
that truth is a living principle which, like all forms of 
life, adapts and readapts itself to its environment. The 
curriculum of these progressive theological seminaries is 
being changed to meet the demands of the new age. Ob- 
solete courses are abandoned, or are placed on the optional 



78 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

list, while required courses are given in the large and 
important field of applied Christianity. In the announce- 
ment of the Department of Home Service of the Union 
Theological Seminary, 'New York, for the year 1921, 
nineteen courses are listed which deal with various phases 
of social work, types of communities, surveys and ad- 
ministration, together with a study of interdenominational 
movements. 

But while we rejoice over certain hopeful signs in the 
field of religious education, there is a note of alarm com- 
ing from another quarter. What is worse perhaps than 
the shortcomings of many of the old line theological sem- 
inaries is the recent advent of certain Bible Schools 
which are offering ^^short cuts' into the Christian ministry. 
These schools require very little intellectual preparation 
for entrance. They admit students from our primary 
schools, and in a short time send them out to preach. In 
addition to the inadequate mental training which they 
give, these schools are dominated by the pre-millennarian 
spirit, which is out of sympathy with the prophetic con- 
ception of the kingdom of God. The type of ready- 
made theology which is handed over the professor's 
counter to the students, most of whom are unable to do 
their own thinking, unfits them for the ministry which 
our age needs. In 1920, the Moody Bible School, in 
Chicago, and the Bible Institute^, in Los Angeles, grad- 
uated more students than all the old line theological sem- 
inaries in the United States. Many of these graduates 
find their way into the vacant pulpits of our Protestant 
denominations. It is a serious matter when half of the 
men who enter the Christion ministry have no other 
equipment than a superficial piety, plus a smattering of 
theology that is wholly out of sympathy with the age in 
which they are to serve. 

Quite recently the Bible School type of theology aroused 
the interest of certain social reactionaries — of a number of 
capitalists, who have become greatly disturbed over the 



Eelation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 79 

social Gospel of the kingdom, which has been speaking out 
so unpleasantly about the twelve hour day, the curse of 
child labor, and the right of the worker to share in the con- 
trol of industry. When these capitalists discovered a 
brand of religion that has not the slightest interest in 
the social Gospel, but on the contrary passes all social 
reform on to the returning Messiah, they found just the 
thing that they w^ere looking for. We were not at all 
surprised to learn of the recent courtship of capitalism 
and these Bible Schools. The schools want money, and 
the capitalists want schools that manufacture a brand of 
religion that blinks at exploitation. The Institution at 
Los Angeles is said to be largely financed by an oil mag- 
nate, while other sources of great wealth are interested in 
the Moody school at Chicago. The union of predatory 
wealth and premillennarian religion makes a combination 
of forces as injurious to the cause of the kingdom of God 
as the union of Roman politics and post- Apostolic Christ- 
ianity after the days of Constantino. A great respon- 
sibility rests upon the few progressive old line theological 
seminaries, for it is to them that we must look for the 
counter-action of the anti-social influence that is being 
generated in these new "schools of the prophets." 

The religious education that shall meet the require- 
ments of the age, demands not only a reconstruction of 
the curriculum of the theological seminary, and of the 
working theology of the preacher, but a no less radical 
reconstruction of our liturgy and our hymnology. The 
liturgy and the hymns of all the Christian denomina- 
tions are replete with obsolete conceptions and doctrines 
that can neither interest nor edify our age ; while they are 
lamentably barren in those social conceptions and in those 
vital aspects of religion with which our age needs to be 
leavened. The only hymns in the average church hymnal 
that have any kind of social ring in them are re-expres- 
sions of old Hebrew hymns, foreign mission hyms, or 
patriotic selections. The vital religion which the king- 



80 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

dom of God implies, and which the age demands, should 
be driven home to the hearts and minds of the people not 
only by the Sunday morning sermon and the mid-week 
Bible study, but also by the liturgy we use. The prayers 
that we offer, the responses that we read, and the hymns 
that we sing, should reinforce the message and the spirit 
of the sermon. As it is the effects of vital preaching are 
often nullified by the ritual we use in the rest of the 
service. 

Some time ago I attended a baptismal or Christianing 
service in a church of another city. It was a beautiful 
service. It was an inspiration to see a dozen or more 
fathers and mothers before the altar with their children. 
The sermon was good. The preacher explained baptism 
as an act of solemn consecration. He made clear to those 
parents the duties and responsibilities which innocent 
childhood commits to us. The audience was deeply im- 
pressed by the good, common sense. Christian advice that 
was given. But what the preacher said in his sermon was 
contradicted in the rest of the service. The greater part 
of the liturgy, and all of the hymns that were sung, were 
out of harmony with the point of view of the sermon. 
Even the uninitated felt the jar of the conflicting trends 
of thought that were represented in the sermon and in 
the rest of the service.. 

In the spring of 1917, the Board of Health of our city 
established a baby clinic, and to encourage the good work, 
and to inspire my people to support it, I prepared a 
sermon on: The Healing Function of Religion, or Our 
Religious Duty to Men's Bodies. I looked for some 
hymns to reinforce my thoughts, but I looked in vain. 
Our hymnal did not contain a single hymn that breathed 
the spirit of my sermon. Very much is lost by this 
failure of the hymns and the liturgy to support our the- 
ology. Words like the following from the pen of J. W. 
Dawson, set to real devotional music, would have added 
very much to the effectiveness of my sermon that morning : 



Belation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 81 

"Lover of souls indeed, 
But lover of bodies too. 
Seeing in human flesh 
The God shine through; 
Hallowed by thy name, 
And for the sake of Thee, 
Hallowed be all men, 
For thine they be. 

Doer of deeds divine. 
Thou, the Father's Son, 
In all thy children may 
Thy will be done. 
Till each works miracles 
On poor and sick and blind, 
Learning from thee the art 
Of being kind." 

Our liturgy should embody tlie social principles to 
which the church stands committed as an instrument of 
the kingdom of God. Nothing could more effectively in- 
still the social spirit of the kingdom in the mind 
of the congregation than the repeating, for example, 
of a social creed like that of the Society of Friends, 
at the morning or evening worship. It would be 
more Christian, and vastly more sensible, than the 
constant repeating of creeds and conceptions which 
we know have neither interest nor meaning for our 
age. Our liturgy should contain prayers that breathe 
the social spirit of the kingdom of God. If the 
liturgy and the hymns would enable the congregation to 
unite in expressing the convictions of the sermon or the 
Sunday school lesson, the moral and the pedagogic effects 
of the service would be greatly enhanced. Our hymns 
and prayers could be made powerful factors in the in- 
culcating of the kingdom spirit. But as it is the type of 
Christianity that is presented in the sermon and the Bible 
study is contradicted by the type that is presented in the 
devotional service; and the result is not orderly edifica- 
tion, but confusion in the mind of the worshippers. 



82 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

Eeligious education is seriously handicapped so long as 
one part of the service contradicts what is said and done 
in other parts of it. 

In this discussion I have gone on the assumption that 
the purpose of religious education is the inculcation of 
Christian principles and ideals, and the creation of a 
Christian attitude toward life, rather than instruction in 
certain facts and definitions. We may, of course, not 
lose sight of the fact that religious education cannot he 
divorced from instruction in certain personal and his- 
torical facts. The principles and the ideals that are to 
he inculcated are incarnated in certain individuals and 
institutions, and are inseparably connected with certain 
movements of history; and they must be taught in con- 
nection with instruction in the life of such individuals 
and in the facts connected with such historic movements. 
But there is a radical difference between the type of 
religious education that emphasizes, as its fundamental 
purpose, instruction in the facts of the Scriptures and the 
opinions of the church, and the type that emphasizes, as 
its fundamental purpose, the inculcation of the funda- 
mental Christian principles and ideals. The latter is the 
type of religious education that the social theory of the 
kingdom of God implies. The religious education that is 
animated by any other purpose will fail to satisfy the 
needs of our age. 

This change in the fundamental purpose of religious 
education implies also a change in the method of in- 
struction. Facts and doctrines can be imparted by means 
of text books, class room lectures, and addresses; but 
principles we learn by doing rather than by hearing. It 
is only by doing, not by hearing, that we realize ideals. 
The type of religious education implied in this discus- 
sion demands what has been termed: '^education through 
participation/' rather than ^'education through imparta- 
tion/' We must not only help our pupils to understand 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 83 

the kingdom ideals and principles, but we must encourage 
them to practice the principles in their daily life, — in the 
home, in the school, and in the community. We must not 
only enlighten our church members in the social principles 
of the kingdom, but we must encourage and direct them 
in the practicing of these principles in the community 
in which they live. 

Professor George Albert Coe, of the department of 
religious education in the Union Theological Seminary, 
Xew York City, has been giving serious attention to this 
matter of religious education through the immediate 
participation of the pupils in the principles that are 
taught. His recent book: ^'A Social Theory of Religious 
Education," marks a new epoch in our country in this 
important field. It is a book that should be studied by 
theological professors, preachers, and Suliday school 
workers. It sets forth in clear and forceful language 
the new theory and method of religious education. In 
the Union School of Religion, which is supervised by 
Professor Coe himself, an attempt is made to carry out 
the theory advocated in the book. The children who 
attend the Union School of Religion are encouraged, under 
the direction and guidance of their teachers, to put into 
actual practice, as individuals and as classes, the prin- 
ciples that are taught in the class room. It is an attempt 
to teach Christian principles through the actual participa- 
tion of the pupils in the principles, rather than through 
mere information in regard to the principles. It is a 
way of directly linking up our religious education with 
constructive efforts at building a better world. 

IV 

THE CHUECH AND DIVIN"E WORSHIP 

The Christian church, as the logical successor of the 
Jewish Temple, has fallen heir to the sacred duty of 
leadership in divine worship. 'No other institution in 



84 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

modem society is equipped, either in spirit or witli the 
rmaehinery, to render this service. Other linstitutions 
may be profoundly interested in certain aspects of the 
kingdom. Other agencies may teach brotherhood and 
practice mercy as persistently as the church. But it is to 
the church alone that we look for leadership in the matter 
of divine worship. She may not allow anything to dim 
her zeal in the prosecution of this fundamental duty. 
The present interest in social service must not be allowed 
to minimize the importance of the true worship of God. 
It is a discipline that we cannot afford to neglect on the 
peril of our individual souls and the soul of society. 
The average man would soon become forgetful of God 
and unmindful of his highest moral obligations, if it were 
not for the stated seasons of worship and for the spe- 
cialized forms of worship. The majority of men, en- 
grossed as they are in their business and their pleasure, 
would soon become unmindful of God if it were not for 
the Sundays that are set in between the busy weeks, when 
the church bids us drop the tools of labor from our hands 
and the cares of the world from our minds, and calls us 
into her quiet and holy precincts to worship God. 

It is no mere fancy of the religious zealot, but a plain 
fact of history, that the most delicate sensibilities of our 
nature are dependent upon our relation to God. If we 
would forget God, which we might if it were not for the 
church's repeated calls to worship, the deterioration of 
our sense of moral values and purposes would inevitably 
follow. Certain ethical philosophers have denied that 
morality is in any way conditioned upon faith in God. 
Some have denied that a universal collapse of faith in God 
would affect social morality. But the testimony of 
history does not coincide with the conjecture of these 
philosophers. On the contrary, wherever a people ceased 
to worship their God or their gods, the result of their ir- 
religion soon became manifest in their individual and 
their social life. History testifies to the fact that it is 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 85 

better to worship gods made with hands than to worship 
no gods at all. The gods of a people, with rare exceptions, 
represent the highest ideals of the people. The pagan 
people of the past seldom, if ever, rose higher in their 
moral efforts than the ideals represented by the gods whom 
they formally worshiped. Even in the minds of the 
ignorant and superstitious the God whom we worship in 
the church on Sunday represents the highest and the best 
of everything that they can conceive of. Our Christian 
God is the incarnation of the loftiest ideals that the 
human mind is capable of conceiving or that the human 
heart is capable of feeling ; and it is good to bow the knee 
to Him in devout and reverent worship. 

There are many people, and their number seems to be 
increasing, who profess to have faith in the existence of 
God, and who believe in some form of divine worship, but 
who seem to feel no need of the church. Men who are 
above reproach frankly tell us that they can worship God 
at home, or in the woods and in the fields, as acceptably 
as they can in the church. A man, who was formerly 
an officer in one of our Allentown congregations, told me 
some time ago that he gets more satisfaction and benefit 
from the worship of God in nature or in art than he does 
from the formal worship of God in the church. He used 
to take his children to Sunday school and to church, 
but now he takes them for a walk into the fields or the 
woods on Sunday, or to a band concert, and frankly dis- 
claims the feeling of any loss to himself or his children. 

I, too, love nature and art. I, too, feel the presence of 
God in a fine piece of music, in a beautiful painting or 
statue, and especially in the divine "out-of-doors.'' But 
I want to guard against deceiving myself. I know that 
it is my sensuous nature rather than my spiritual nature 
that is stimulated as I sit on a mossy bank, under a green 
tree, beside a babbling brook. It is the pleasant sensation 
from the stimulation of my physical senses, and the ele- 
mentary emotions that accompany such stimulation, that 



86 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

I enjoy under the green tree. But the emotions that are 
created within me, and the effect which Ihese emotions 
have on my will and my character, are of a higher order 
as I sit in a church that is dedicated to the highest Being 
that can be conceived of, and as I listen to the sermon and 
join with my family and my neighbors in the prayers 
and the hymns that are hallowed with age and with a 
thousand sacred associations, and all of which is addressed 
to that which is highest and noblest in me. I come back 
from the fields and the woods physically and mentally 
recreated, which is a good thing, especially in such strenu- 
ous times as these; but I come back from the church 
mentally and spiritually stimulated which is better. 

Man is more than a sensuous creature.^ He is also a 
spiritual being. He has ^yq physical senses by means of 
which he communicates with the material universe, and 
through which the material universe communicates with 
him. But he has also a sixth sense — a mystic sense — by 
means of which he apprehends the super-material, and 
through which the super-material communicates with him. 
Scientific introspection and psychological analysis will 
not disclose the presence of this mystic sense, but religious 
experience confirms it. Dr. Paul Moore Strayer has well 
said: "What differentiates the human from the brute 
is the sixth sense, the sense by which we apprehend what 
we cannot see, nor hear, nor feel, nor taste, nor smell. It 
is this spiritual faculty that gives to human life whatever 
fineness it possesses.'' ^» It is this spiritual or mystic 
sense that is nourished through divine worship in the 
church. Erom lack of proper nourishment, or from dis- 
use, it will degenerate and finally die, just as the physical 
senses will. And when this mystic sense dies, our sense 
of God dies with it ; and when our sense of God dies, the 
finest and noblest things that our human nature is capable 
of will speedily wither and die. 

The church, with her specially designed buildings 

^ The Reconstruction of the Church, p. 118. 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 87 

solemnly dedicated to the worship of God, — with her 
devout prayers and sacred hymns, — with her holy sacra- 
ments, — and with her many hallowed and sacred associa- 
tions, — is the only institution in society that can cultivate 
this mystic sense which keeps us in touch with the Infinite. 
When the church rightly cultivates this spiritual faculty; 
when she guards it against the superstitions and the 
vagaries of which it is so susceptible; when she properly 
nourishes and directs it, she renders a service of profound 
individual and social significance. A righteous and last- 
ing social order can be built only upon the character of a 
citizenship that worships a righteous and holy God. The 
nation that ceases to worship God, whether from theoret- 
ical or from practical motives, sows the seed of its own 
deterioration and ultimate destruction. 

The present social order is seriously menaced by a most 
subtle kind of atheism. The atmosphere about us is being 
contaminated by a vulgar spirit that worships no God but 
material things, and that recognizes no sovereign ruler but 
its own desires. The majority of the people still believe 
that there is a God ; but the God whom both the classes and 
the masses worship in their every day life is not the God 
of their belief, but the Mammon of their desires. There 
is a contradiction between their religious faith and their 
daily practice. The things of their faith are not as real 
to them as the things of their desires.> What they see in 
the shop windows, or hear in the opera house, is more real 
to them than what they hear about in the church. The 
things that can be exchanged between us are more real 
than the God to whom we pray. A quotation 
from Wall Street, represents something more real 
than a "thus saith the Lord.'' The only real pleasures 
are those that add to our creature delights. The pleasures 
from an automobile trip, a banquet, a moving picture per- 
formance, or a new spring hat, are more real than the 
delight which the Psalmist experienced in the house of the 
Lord. The majority of the people still believe in a future 



88 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

world, — in an endless life beckoning to the soul. The 
war has shown how deep-rooted and universal this belief 
is when a real test is made of it. But so far as the prac- 
tice of the majority of the people is concerned the only 
real time is this present hour, which they are filling as full 
as possible with mere creature delights and satisfactions. 
In this materialistic atmosphere the finer things of our 
American life are withering and decaying. It is impos- 
sible to establish and maintain a righteous social order in 
an atmosphere of such vulgar materialism as this. The 
call to the reverent and thoughtful worship of God was 
never more urgent than to-day. 

In Europe matters are worse than they are here in 
America. In certain sections of Europe systematic efforts 
have been made to rebuild the broken down social order 
on a strictly materialistic-atheistic foundation. Eco- 
nomic determinism is the only God recognized by the 
Soviet philosophy. The labor movement of Continental 
Europe has banished from its philosophical creed all spir- 
itual conceptions such as God, the individual soul, and the 
future world. Its explanation of history is that of a pure 
economic determinism. All ideals are explained as pure 
economic reflexes. The only evils are economic evils, and 
the only good things are things of economic value. French 
syndicalism has been influenced somewhat by Bergson's 
idea of a creative evolution. But Bergson's influence has 
been felt only on the practical side of the movement. It 
has been conducive to direct creative action in industry, 
but that is all. Bergson's influence has not been able to 
replace the idea of God and of His creative purposiveness 
into the French labor movement. The labor movement of 
Continental Europe, from Paris to St. Petersburg, and 
from Berlin to Eome, is ready with a program for the 
reconstruction of society on a materialistic-atheistic 
foundation. 

The doctrine of economic determinism contains a very 
large element of truth. Economic values are among the 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 89 

greatest values, and economic motives are among the 
strongest motives. But when economic determinism is 
made the whole truth — when economic values are made 
the only values and economic motives the only motives — 
the doctrine becomes a dangerous untruth. This is the 
most serious defect in the modern labor philosophy. The 
great labor movement, which represents one of the 
mightiest forces in our modem life, would relegate the 
w^orship of God to the scrap-heap of worn out superstitions. 

It has been the opinion of the greatest statesmen of 
history that such an attempt at social rebuilding is futile. 
Pericles, the wisest of the Greek statesmen, said: ''There 
never was and there never can be a state successfully built 
and maintained on an atheistic foundation." Of similar 
import is the judgment of the Hebrew statesman-prophet 
who said: ''Where there is no vision the people perish 
(i. e., go astray).". . . "Blessed is the nation whose God 
is the Lord*" Plato warned his age against the destruc- 
tion of the popular faith in the gods because of the whole- 
some moral and social value of such faith. The judgment 
of these men was based upon solid facts which they had 
observed. It grew out of the actual experience of their 
own people. In Israel, in Greece, and in Rome, every 
widespread and extended period of absentation from the 
temples was followed by a wave of atheism; and every 
such wave of atheism was followed by a lapse in individual 
and social morality. 

It might not be impossible to build and maintain a 
certain kind of social order on a materialistic-atheistic 
foundation. But I am convinced of the impossibility of 
building and maintaining a just and fraternal social order 
such as the kingdom of God implies upon an atheistic 
foundation, and in a mammonistic atmosphere. A social 
order that aims at righteousness, justice, and holy love for 
all mankind, can be built only on the character of a 
citizenship that bows the knee in thoughtful, reverent wor- 
ship of the God whom Jesus Christ has revealed. When 



90 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

the church leads us in such worship she renders a real 
service, — a service not only for the individual worshipper, 
but for the social order in all its departments., 

But divine worship, fundamental as it is in our religious 
life, must not be made an end in itself. It is only a 
means to a higher end. It is only a means of lifting us 
into the presence of God to become sanctified and strength- 
ened for service on earth. There were times when the 
church made too much of divine worship. There were 
times when all the requirements of religion were exhausted 
in the act of formal worship in the church. When a man 
worshipped God in the sanctuary on the Lord's Day he 
did all that religion required of him. That is a serious 
error. When we make divine worship an end in itself we 
degrade it into a species of idolatry. Divine worship 
must not be substituted for divine service, for it is only a 
means to it. If our formal worship of God in the church 
has no wholesome effect on our dealings with our neigh- 
bors, as was the case in the days of Amos and Micah, it 
deserves our criticism. If worship in the Temple unfits 
us to do our duty to an unfortunate man, as it did the 
priest and the Levite in the Parable of the Good Samar- 
itan, it becomes an evil rather than a good. 

The church of the future must maintain a rational 
equilibrium between divine worship and divine service, — 
between the worship of God in the sanctuary and the serv- 
ice of humanity outside of the sanctuary. By means of 
divine worship we must ascend the Mount of Transfigura- 
tion where we hold communion with the Infinite, and from 
thence we must again descend into the valley of common 
toil and trial, — down into the homeless homes and among 
our sin-wrecked brothers, to help them rise to the level of 
our own richer, fuller, and happier life. Dr. Harry 
Emmerson Fosdick, in a sermon to his l^ew York congre- 
gation, a few Sundays ago, said : ^This is not divine serv- 
ice. This is only getting ready for it. Divine service 



Relation of Christian Church to the Kingdom of God 91 

will begin to-morrow morning out there amid the din and 
the dust of business, in a fight for a Christian world." 
Through divine worship in the church on Sunday we are 
to gain inspiration and help for the fight for the Christian 
world, or the kingdom of God. 



THE CHUECH AE^D THE EXTENSIVE 

GEOWTH or THE KIISTGDOM 

OE 

THE PEOBLEMS OF EyA:^GELIZATIO:N' 



CHAPTER THEEE 

THE CHURCH AND THE EXTENSIVE GROWTH OF THE 

KINGDOM, 

OR 

THE PROBLEMS OF EVANGEIilZATION 

EVA]SrGELIZATIO:N'— the publishing of the "good 
news' ^ which Jesus came to proclaim is the first 
kingdom-duty that has been entrusted to us. 
The fundamental principles of the kingdom — the universal 
Fatherhood of God, the universal brotherhood of man, and 
all the individual and social implications which follow 
logically from these two fundamental principles — shall be 
declared in such a way as to inspire the interest and the 
faith of the people. The first step in the building of the 
kingdom of God is the winning of formal acceptance of 
its principles and purposes. This is the tosh of evangel- 
ism. 

Because of the quite general identification of the church 
and the kingdom, the problems of evangelism have been 
considered the problems of the church rather than the 
problems of the kingdom of God. The purpose of evangel- 
ism has been the recruiting of members for the church 
rather than the inspiring of interest and faith in the prin- 
ciples and purposes of the kingdom. In her evangelistic 
efforts the church has put before the people a program 
of her own rather than the program of the kingdom of 
God. In many respects the program of the church has 
been identically the same as the program of the king- 
dom, while in other respects it has differed radically from 
it both in content and in spirit. If the church had always 
faithfully declared the principles and purposes of the 
kingdom, then the attitude of the people toward the church 

95 



96 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

would at tlie same time be an indication of their attitude 
toward the kingdom of God. But as it is, the response of 
the people to our evangelistic efforts must be interpreted 
as an indication of their attitude toward the church and 
her program rather than of their faith in the kingdom 
of God and its purposes. This fact somewhat relieves the 
present evangelistic situation. The widespread indiffer- 
ence to the church would be exceedingly disheartening if 
it were at the same time an indication of an equally wide- 
spread indifference to the principles and purposes of the 
kingdom of God.> But this is not the case. There is 
assuring evidence, both within the church and outside of 
it, of confidence and interest in the principles of the king- 
dom of God when they are properly presented to the 
people. Whether all the people, or even the majority of 
them, can ever be recruited for the kingdom of God is too 
remote a matter even for speculation. But I am confident 
that the program of the kingdom of God — a program 
that includes everything that concerns life here and here- 
after — will inspire a response on the part of those people 
whose character and influence determine the policy and 
the destiny of the community and of the world. 

Since the Christian church is the only institution that 
has been specially entrusted with the duty of extending 
the kingdom over the earth, it is not possible to make a 
study of the growth of the kingdom apart from the work 
of the church. And since the program of the church 
is in many vital respects identical with the program of 
the kingdom, we must, in a sense, gauge the progress of 
the kingdom by the progress of the church. 

I shall devote this discussion of evangelism to the fol- 
lowing questions: What progress has been made in the 
matter of evangelizing the world? What is the present 
situation? And how may we do better in the future? 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 97 



THE TALE OF STATISTICS 

Evidence of a Healthy Growth. — Much has been accom- 
plished. The one hundred and twenty believers at the 
time of Jesus' death have grown into a vast army of 
approximately 500,000,000. From the circumscribed 
land of the Jews, Christianity has spread out over the 
earth and has become rooted in every land under the sun. 
The mustard seed, planted by the Master's own hand, and 
nurtured by his faithful followers in every land and age, 
has grown into the biggest thing in the world. 

And not only is there evidence of the substantial growth 
of Christianity in the past, but there are encouraging signs 
of renewed life and energy at the present time. There 
was more evangelistic zeal manifested during the last two 
decades than at any other time since the days of the 
Apostles. Among the encouraging things is the notable 
increase in our offerings for benevolence. ISTot only local 
congregations, but whole denominations, have doubled, 
tripled, and in some cases even quadrupled their offerings 
for Christian missions during the last two decades. Since 
1901 the Protestant churches of North America have in- 
creased their offerings for Foreign Missions over 300%. 
The increase in the church's contributions for Home 
Misisons, and for all other benevolent purposes, has been 
equally encouraging. The Inter-Church World Movement 
of IsTorth America has just completed a campaign to raise 
a sum of money for religious purposes that would have 
been impossible to conceive of at any other time in the 
history of the church. 

There has also been an appreciable increase in the mem- 
bership of the Christian church both at home and abroad. 
The increase in the membership of the religious forces of 
the United States during the last twenty six years has been 
94:%, while a few of the Protestant bodies have more than 
doubled their membership during this period. And dur- 



\ 



98 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

ing the last two decades the percentage of increase in the 
membership of the Christian church in the non-Christian 
lands has been greater than in the home lands. 

More notable still is the recent development of mission- 
ary machinery, and the unprecedented zeal in the dissem- 
ination of missionary intelligence. Missionary societies, 
whose only aim and purpose is the propagation of Chris- 
tianity, have been multiplied by thousands all over the 
world during the last quarter of a century. Every denom- 
ination is organized for efficient missionary activity. 
Missionary education has been receiving special attention 
in every Protestant denomination. Hundreds of denom- 
inational and inter-denominational missionary conferences 
are being held each year for the purpose of disseminating 
missionary intelligence and of creating missionary 
enthusiasm. The individual congregations have become 
organized for more effective missionary work. Every live 
congregation has a special department to direct its mission- 
ary and benevolent operations. Mission study classes are 
being conducted in almost every Protestant congregation 
in the country. These things give occasion for rejoicing 
in Zion. 

Evidence of Weakness. — But there is also another side 
to the tale of statistics, and it is well that we should give 
it thoughtful consideration. In our reports to ecclesias- 
tical bodies, and at our missionary conferences, we have 
been in the habit of speaking about the things that we have 
accomplished, while we have ignored the things that we 
have failed to accomplish. We have been deceiving our- 
selves in this way. To get a true conception of the evan- 
gelistic problem we must do more than study the church, 
and tabulate the progress she has made. To see what 
progress has really been made we must gauge the pace of 
the church by the pace of the world. When we do this 
we are forced to the conclusion that the problems of evan- 
gelism are about as far from solution as they ever were. 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 99 

While the membership of the church has been notably 
increased, the population of the world has also increased 
in about the same proportion; and unless the church will 
greatly accelerate her evangelistic pace she will not be able 
to overtake the world. 

In spite of all our foreign missionaary efforts we have 
only touched the borders of the great non-Christian world. 
Even in such countries as India, China, and Japan, where 
Christian missions have made most progress, we have 
reached only a few people in the larger cities, while the 
smaller cities and towns, and the great rural population, 
remain practically untouched. The report of 3,167,614 
communicant members of the Christian church in the non- 
Christian world, with 1,869,145 enrolled in the Sunday 
Schools, and with an additional 1,500,000 adherents, may 
be very encouraging when not compared with what is still 
unaccomplished. These figures represent great courage 
and noble sacrifice on the part of our faithful missionaries. 
But the evangelistic problem can be appreciated only when 
we compare this insignificant number of Christians with 
the vast non-Christian population of one billion souls. 

Even in our own country the evangelistic problem is 
about as far from solution as it was at any other time of 
our history. According to the latest statistics there are 
about 45,000,000 people in the United States above the 
normal age of church membership who are not affiliated 
with any Christian church, Protestant or Catholic. That 
means that more than half of the adult citizens of this 
great Christian country are still material for evangeliza- 
tion. And only about 26,000,000 of the adult population 
of the country are nominally affiliated with the Protestant 
church. That means that two out of every three adults 
throughout the length and breadth of this great Protestant 
stronghold are still outside of the Protestant church. And 
69.3^ of all the young people of the country under twenty- 
five years of age are unaffiliated with any of our schools 
of religious instruction. In spite of the fact that the 



100 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

religious bodies of the United States almost doubled their 
membership during the last twenty-six years, the country 
is just as far from being evangelized as it was at the 
beginning of this period. 

Dr. Josiah Strong, a short time before he died, warned 
us against the fallacy of assuming that we are on a fair 
way of evangelizing our country. In an article in the 
Gospel of the Kingdom he said: "It is not the actual 
growth of the church that is significant; . . . but this 
growth as compared with that of the country ; and during 
the last half of the nineteenth century the rate of gain of 
the Protestant churches in the United States was only one- 
fourth as great as it had been during the first half of the 
century; and during the twenty years from 1880 to 1900, 
it was only one-fourth as great as it had been during the 
preceding thirty years; while during the ten years from 
1890 to 1900, it was only one-third as great as during the 
preceding decade; that is, during the last ten years of 
the century the rate of gain on the population was only 
one-sixteenth as great as during the first half of the cen- 
tury^ We must not be surprised to learn, therefore, that 
from 1900 to 1910 there was no gain whatever on the pop- 
ulation, and each year since there has been a slight loss." 
That means that during the last century the Protestant 
church has really made no progress at all in the matter of 
Protestantizing our country, since the population of the 
country has grown in the same ratio as the membership 
of the Protestant church. 

Dr. Strong's statement was not taken seriously by the 
church at the time. I recollect that some one took occasion 
to dispute the truth of his claim. The figures given in 
the Federal Council's "Year Book," which has been our 
final court of appeal in all matters of religious statistics, 
seemed to contradict the figures given by Dr. Strong. The 
"Year Book" for 1917 -states that in 1890 the total reli- 
gious strength of the country was 20,618,000, and that the 
net increase for the twenty-six years following was 19,- 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 101 

399,000, or 94%, while tlie gain in the population of the 
country for this same period was 39,000,000, or only 61%. 
From this, and similar statements, we superficially in- 
ferred that we were making commendable progress in 
evangelizing our country. But the statistician of the 
"Year Book" summed up all the religious gains of the 
country, including not only the Catholics, but also the 
Eastern Orthodox bodies, and some other bodies whom 
many good church people consider fit subjects for evangel- 
ization. One thing that very considerably raised the 
percentage as given in the "Year Book" was the gain of 
the Catholic church during this period. But the Catholic 
gains were almost entirely from the large influx of immi- 
grants from Catholic Europe. The Catholic gain on this 
side of the Atlantic was cancelled by the Catholic loss on 
the other side. The Catholic Church has not been able to 
gain any substantial hold on the non-Catholic element of 
our population. 

Quite recently a number of local studies were made 
of the grip the Protestant church has on the population of 
the comunity, and in each case, so far as I have been able 
to discover, these studies have confirmed the position taken 
more than a decade ago by the pioneer, Dr. Strong. A 
study of the grip the church has on the community was 
made in our own city, a few years ago, by Professor 
James H. S. Bossard, then head of the department of 
sociology in Muhlenburg College. ^ This study showed 
that the Catholic church made surprising gains in our city 
since 1890. The membership of the Catholic church in- 
creased 710.3^ during this period. But this gain was due 
to the assimilation of the large influx of Catholic immi- 
grants from Europe, and not to any special hold that the 
Catholic church has gotten on our community. The 
Catholic church has been recruiting very little of the non- 
Catholic element of our city. All that the Catholic church 
has been able to do is to assimilate a portion of her own 

^ The churches of Allentown. 



102 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of Cod 

people who come to us from the other side of the Atlantic. 

Professor Bossard devoted the main part of his study 
to the native Protestant element of our population, and he 
found that the percentage of increase of the Protestant 
church from 1890 to 1917 was only a little higher than 
the percentage of increase of the native element of the 
population of fifteen years of age and upward. During 
these twenty-seven years the Protestant churches increased 
their membership 111%, while the native element of the 
population, from fifteen years and upward, increased 
100%. While AUentown is, in a sense, a typical indus- 
trial city, the Pennsylvania Germans, who compose the 
major portion of the native element of the population, are 
more devoted to the church both by temperament and by 
training than the native element of the average American 
community. Allowance must also be made for the fact 
that at least 60% of the 100% increase in the population 
of our city from 1890 to 1917 came from within a radius 
of twenty miles from the city, a rural territory in which 
church life is still at its best. During the last decade, 
however, our citizenship has become more cosmopolitan; 
and because of this the grip of the church has become 
weaker. During the last ten years the increase in the 
membership of the Protestant church has not equalled the 
increase in the population of the city. 

In the majority of American cities of our size the mem- 
bership of the Protestant church has not kept pace with 
the growth of the population during the last decade or two. 
Recent surveys have revealed scores of instances where the 
Protestant church has been falling back in the race with 
the population of the community. This is especially true 
in the case of the larger cities, and in our industrial cen- 
ters. There are twenty-two cities in the United States 
whose population increased more than 100% from 1900 
to 1910, while in every case, but one, so far as I have been 
able to discover, the membership of the Protestant church 
failed to keep pace with the growth of the population of 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 103 

the city. During the period from 1910 to 1920 the gap 
between the population of our leading cities and the mem- 
bership of our Protestant churches has been considerably 
widened. This is a serious matter. The power of the 
country is being centered more and more in the big cities. 
In the degree that the church loses her hold on the big 
cities she loses her hold on the nation. 

And not only has the membership of the Protestant 
church failed to keep pace with the rapid growth of the 
population of our cities, but she has also failed, during the 
last decade or two, to distribute her new missions and to 
adjust her work so as to make her influence felt where it 
is most needed. Vast sections of our great cities are 
growing up without the service and the influence of the 
church. So far as I have been able to observe, we have 
studiously avoided rather than sought the sections which 
most need our help when we locate new churches. The 
question is not: where can this new mission be of most 
help to the people and to the community, but where will 
it be likely to come to self-support soonest ? We have been 
seeking a nucleus of people of our own particular denom- 
inational beliefs and practices, rather than the people who 
are most in need of the encouragement and ministry of 
the Gospel. The interests of the church as an institution, 
or the interests of a particular denomination, are the ends 
sought, rather than the welfare of the people. We have 
been unmindful of the fact that the interests of the king- 
dom are always identified with the welfare of the people, 
rather than with the numerical growth of a denomination. 

Another thing that is to be deplored is the inclination 
of established congregations to abandon the sections to 
which the poor, the toilers, and the foreigners are gravitat- 
ing. The church that is being surrounded by the 
^'barbarians" will relocate, rather than make an effort to 
Christianize or to Americanize the ''barbarians." The 
churches have been following the "better class" as it moves 
into the newer and better sections of our cities, or into the 



104 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

more exclusive suburbs. The reports for 1914 of ^yq of 
our largest and most influential denominations sbow that 
almost one hundred of their congregations relocated in 
that one year. Was it kingdom-interest or self-interest 
that moved them? Was it the natural spirit of self- 
preservation, or the kingdom-spirit of service, that 
animated them ? In the kingdom of God he who seeks to 
save his life v^ill ultimately lose it, while he who is willing 
to give his life in unselfish service will save it. In many 
cases the discarded church properties were sold for com- 
mercial purposes; and, in one instance of which I have 
knowledge, the former house of worship was degraded 
into a saloon. In very few cases have the churches 
attempted any religious work, or any constructive com- 
munity service, in the sections from which they moved. 
They have scarcely left their foot-prints on the filthy and 
neglected streets from which the poor, forlorn aliens might 
take courage. 

If a congregation can no longer maintain itself in its 
old location, which is very often the case, it would be good 
evangelism for our Mission Boards to support such a con- 
gregation in the community where self-support has become 
impossible, but where the need of religious services and 
the influence of the church have become more imperative 
than ever. Such a procedure would be more in harmony 
with the spirit of the kingdom of God than the investing 
of large sums of money in the establishing and maintain- 
ing of new churches in the aristocratic sections of our 
cities. Or the discarded church properties might be 
maintained as community welfare-centers under denom- 
inational supervision. If some suitable persons were 
supported as community welfare-workers at such aban- 
doned preaching stations a greater service might be ren- 
dered to the kingdom of God and to the cause of Amer- 
icanization than by supporting half a dozen new missions 
in the exclusive suburbs. Or the different denominations 
that were formerly interested in these quarters where our 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 105 

sectarian church work is no longer possible, might unite in 
maintaining a community-church which, through the joint 
support and patronage of the denominations, could be 
equipped to render a real service. But this has rarely 
been done. Vast sections in our great cities are thus left 
to grow up without the care of the church. Great multi- 
tudes of people, massed together under the most unwhole- 
some physical and moral conditions, are left without any 
real religious influence. The most neglected sections are 
invariably the quarters where the poor, the city's toilers, 
and the aliens live. Here is where population, disease, 
crime, and social discontent breed fastest, and where the 
leavening influence of the religion of the kingdom of God 
is most needed. But we have avoided rather than sought 
these sections. 

Another thing that we have noticed in our study of 
statistics is that the church has been losing her grip on 
the men. In spite of the recent laymen's movement in 
the churches, which has enlisted multitudes of men for 
service; and in spite of the encouraging crowds at many 
of our men's conferences, the figures show that there is a 
shortage of man-power in the churches. In 1915 there 
were 3,000,000 fewer men than women in the Christian 
churches of the country. In that year, according to a 
statement made in the Gospel of the Kingdom, "the male 
membership of the Protestant churches made up only 
18.7% of the adult male population of the country; while 
the Catholic church, including all baptized children, made 
up only 13.2%. The male element in all the Christian 
churches of the country, including the baptized male chil- 
dren of the Catholic church, comprised only 31.9% of the 
adult male population of the country." That means that 
sixty-nine out of every one hundred men in the United 
States are outside of the Christian Churches. If we 
eliminate the Catholic children under fifteen years of age, 
we can count only about twenty-eight men out of every 
one hundred for the Christian church. And there has 



106 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

been a constant decrease in the ratio between tbe male 
membership of the Christian church and the male popula- 
tion of the country ever since economic disturbances and 
social unrest have been on the increase. 

If these statistics are correct, and we have reasons to 
believe that they are, what conclusion shall we draw ? Are 
the men of to-day more irreligious than the women ? It 
was not always so. Or has our religion in some way be- 
come effeminated, and thus lost its power to appeal to men ? 
The religion of Jesus, and primitive Christianity, 
appealed to men; and there is something vitally wrong 
with the religion that ceases to do so. The religion of 
the kingdom of God is a virile religion, and I am confident 
that it will appeal to manly men if it is presented to them 
in a manly way. 

And, finally, the statisticians inform us that attendance 
at the regular church services is on the wane. I take no 
interest in any odious comparisons between our day and 
the good old days of our forefathers. We know little 
about the good old days, for our forefathers did not com- 
pile statistics on church attendance. Whether fewer 
people attend church now-a-days than formerly we do not 
know, and have no way of knowing ; but we do know that 
too few are attending church in our day. We have suc- 
ceeded in recruiting only a fraction of our population, 
and only a fraction of this fraction attends church with 
any degree of regularity.. It is only quite recently, and 
only in a few communities, that any reliable studies of 
church attendance were made. But wherever such studies 
have been made the disclosures have not been very 
encouraging. 

Professor Bossard, in the study previously referred to, 
gave special atention to the matter of church attendance. 
The studies were made in 1912, and again in 1917 ; and 
I know of no investigation that was conducted with greater 
fairness to the church. His conclusion was that the 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 107 

Catholic cliurcli, with eight organizations'^ ministering to 
11,344 members, comes into weekly touch with the 
majority of its people; while the Protestant church, with 
fifty-seven organizations^ ministering to 21,193 members 
comes into weekly touch with only about one-fourth of its 
people. During the period when the counts were taken 
25.7% of the Protestant membership attended the morn- 
ing service, and 33.7% the evening service. Making due 
allowance for the probable number of visitors and the 
larger children who were counted as members, it appears 
that only about one out of every four of our Protestant 
church members attended the Sunday church services dur- 
ing the extended periods when the investigations were 
made. From the facts that had been gathered. Professor 
Bossard concluded that the Protestant churches of Allen- 
town come into weekly touch with only about one out of 
every eight or ten of the native Protestant element of the 
population of our city. 

And we have reasons to believe that church attendance 
in Allentown is above the average for the country at large. 
I said before that the Pennsylvania German is more de- 
voted to his church by temperament and training than the 
average American citizen; and he is for this reason also 
more regular in his church attendance. And Professor 
Bossard admits that the percentage given in his study of 
church attendance in Allentown is likely too high, for in 
his method of taking the count and striking the averages 
he always gave the church the benefit of the doubt. Allow- 
ance must also be made for the fact that no investigations 
were made during the College vacation period when church 
attendance is at its poorest. It is quite safe to say that 
the percentage of church attendance given in Professor 
Bbssard's study is considerably above the average for the 
average American community. 

1 In 1912. 

2 In 1912. 



108 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

From the studies which I made during the last few 
years I would judge that about 30% of the membership 
of our Protestant churches seldom go to church ; that about 
50% of them go more or less periodically, i. e., at special 
seasons, and on special occasions ; and that not more than 
20% of them go to church with dependable regularity. 
In our Sunday School work we have not succeeded any 
better.1 Only about 30% of the young people under 
twenty-five years of age are enrolled in our Sunday 
Schools ; and, according to information given out by recent 
surveys, only about 5 % of- the number enrolled attend all 
the services of the school, while more than half of the 
pupils attend less than half of the sessions. In the average 
American city, the Protestant churches, through their 
regular Sunday and mid-week services, do not get into 
touch with more than one out of every ten or fifteen of 
the population. In San Francisco the Protestant 
churches, through their regular services, reach only one 
out of every twenty-seven of the city's population, and in 
Boston only one out of every fifteen. It is no cause for 
rejoicing in our Protestant Zion to learn that we have 
recruited only about 26% of the population of our coun- 
try, and that we come into weekly touch with only about 
20% of those whom we have recruited. Thus runs the 
tale of statistics. 

Making due allowance for considerable mis-information, 
and also for some misrepresentation on the part of the 
statisticians, it is nevertheless clear that the evangelistic 
task, both at home and abroad, was never more urgent 
than to-day. The world is moving on with a little more 
momentum than the church. In spite of her revived 
missionary zeal, the church is, at the present time, play- 
ing a losing game. I fear that the church's moral in- 
fluence on the average American community has suffered 
a more serious set back than her grip on the population. 
Not only has her power to draw men been waning, but 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 109 

her ability to mould public sentiment and to inspire the 
individual and the social conscience has been waning to a 
still greater degree. 

But this tale of statistics is not a swan's song. Tbe 
cburch is not a spent-force, as many would bave us believe. 
Sbe bas been sbowing signs of weakening, but sbe still 
has a good fund of reserve vitality. Sbe will regain ber 
breatb and will come back into tbe race witb new determ- 
ination. I bave faitb tbat tbe diagnosis of tbe situation, 
wbicb is being made by many of tbe cburcb's true friends, 
will arouse ber to give berself witb ber immense resour- 
ces to tbe solution of tbe problems. 

n 

THE EVANGELISTIC PROBLEMS 1^ THE NON-CrERISTIAN 

LANDS 

The Need of Men and of Money. — In tbe non-Cbristian 
world tbe work of Cbristian missions is still a matter of 
propaganda. It is clear tbat we wbo bave tbe Gospel 
must bring it to tbose wbo bave it not, for ''bow sball 
tbey believe in bim wbom tbey bave not beard? And 
bow sball tbey bear witbout a preacber ? And bow sball 
tbey preacb except tbey be sent V^ ^^ For a long time to 
come we must spare from our work bere at bome many of 
our best and ablest men and women wbo, by tbeir teacb- 
ing and by tbeir conduct, will inject tbe ideals of tbe 
kingdom of God into tbe society of tbe non-Cbristian 
world. And for a long time to come we must consecrate 
mucb of our money for tbe support of our missionaries, 
and for tbe equipping and maintaining of our missionary 
institutions. For several generations, perbaps for sev- 
eral centuries, tbe evangelistic work in tbe non-Cbristian 
world must be directed by alien missionaries and sup- 
ported by foreign money. 

The Goal of Foreign Missions. — ^But tbe object of 

^ Romans 10; 14. 



110 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

Foreign Missions is not to find enougli men and women, 
and to gather enougli American and European money, 
to publish the facts of the Gospels throughout the non- 
Christian world in a specified time. The real aim must 
be to establish enough self-supporting native churches, 
and to train a sufficient number of native Christians, 
who will feel the responsibility for the ultimate evangel- 
ization and christianization of their own people. No 
country will even be evangelized, much less christianized, 
save through the efforts of a self-supporting native church 
that is free from the control of foreigners. The alien mis- 
sionary is indispensable at the present stage of the work, 
both as teacher and as superintendent; but he must as- 
sume the role of leadership only as long as it is really 
necessary. As soon as the native church is able to sup- 
port itself and to assume the responsibility for the man- 
agement of its own affairs, it should be encouraged to do 
so. It is only in this way that the full strength of the 
native church can be developed. The Oriental people, 
among whom Christianity had its beginnings, may yet 
make an important contribution to its development. 
But such contribution will not be made if foreign mis- 
sions are interpreted to mean the enforcing of our par- 
ticular type of Christianity upon the Orient. 

Foreign Missions demand a Religion that answers the 
Needs of Life. — The non-Christian world will not be 
evangelized, either by alien missionaries or by native 
Christians, who have nothing to offer but our formal type 
of Christianity, whether it be the dogmatic or the eccle- 
siastical type. Merely preaching a new religion to the 
non-Christian people, many of whom are already over- 
religious, will not meet with success. ISTo amount of 
polemics against their religions, and no amount of apolo- 
getics in favor of the Christian religion, will win them. 
A few may be reached in this way, but the great majority 
will not respond to that kind of evangelism. The im- 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 111 

ported religion must demonstrate its practical superiority 
over the native religions, or be foredoomed to failure. 
The foreign missionary must show, not so much by his 
message as by his every-day ministry among the people, 
that his religion is better than theirs. Serviceableness, or 
the ability to produce noble character and livable con- 
ditions, is the only kind of apologetics that will meet with 
success, ^ot by rhetoric, nor by logic, but by life, must 
the foreign missionary prove that his religion is the true 
religion. 

The history of primitive Christianity is proof of 
this fact. The prime factor in rooting Christianity in 
the foreign soil of the Greco-Roman world was that it 
answered the needs of life as none of the native religions 
did. In our efforts to explain the foreign missionary 
triumphs of the Apostles and their immediate successors 
we may perhaps have over-emphasized the miraculous 
help of the Spirit, while we have overlooked the natural 
drawing power that was inherent in the social ministry 
of the new religion. In trying to understand how that 
little band of foreign missionaries, without funds, and 
with no home church to back them up, could root Christ- 
ianity so firmly in that hostile pagan soil as to make it 
impossible for a century and a half of systematic perse- 
cution to uproot it, we may not overlook the fact that the 
religion which they represented, wherever it became es- 
tablished, created a new type of community life which 
proved a strong attraction for the masses of pagan society. 
In the new Christian community the masses of the Greco- 
Roman world found that friendship and fellowship for 
which they had been hungering in vain. 

It is true that there were a number of things in prim- 
itive Christianity that appealed to the conglomerate pop- 
ulation of the Greco-Roman world. The absolute con- 
viction of the Apostles that Jesus was the Messiah won 
a favorable hearing from many of the Jews. The new 
religion's clear note of personal immortality, based upon 



112 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

the concrete fact of the resurrection of Jesus, appealed 
to a certain class of Greeks in whom the desire for im- 
mortality was a racial instinct. The new religion^s con- 
ception of God as the Father of each individual appealed 
very strongly to the masses of all races. The individual- 
ism and the idealism of Christianity struck a responsive 
chord in the hearts of many people whose individuality 
was sacrificed in the interest of the state, and whose per- 
sonal rights were never recognized. It was an inspira- 
tion to the common man to learn that he was a child of the 
great God and, therefore, a being of infinite value. 

But the thing that proved the chief attraction in prim- 
itive Christianity was not something in its theology, but 
the plain fact that life in the new Christian community 
was of a higher order than in the pagan world outside. 
The members of the Christian community were cleaner 
and nobler than their pagan neighbors. And, what was 
of more significance still, in the new community all were 
recognized as brothers — real brothers — whether Jew or 
Gentile, master or slave, lettered or unlettered. The new 
Christian community was a unique social unit, ethically 
superior to anything that existed anywhere in pagan so- 
ciety., The members shared not only a common faith and 
a common loyalty, but also a common life. The spirit 
of actual brotherhood expressed by the Christian com- 
munism, the social equality that was experienced at the 
love feasts, and the large-hearted hospitality that existed 
everywhere among the Christians — the hospitality that 
gave the Christian a welcome and a foothold in any 
strange place in the world — did more to win converts for 
the early church than any theological discourses that the 
disciples were capable of delivering, or than any passion- 
ate appeals to individuals, could have accomplished. 
Chief among the factors in the foreign missionary suc- 
cess of the Apostles was the fact that Christianity made 
life more livable than any other agency in society. The 
people saw that the new religion meant something for 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 113 

their everyday burdened life which the other religions 
had not given them ; and that was one reason — I am con- 
vinced that it was the main reason — why so many es- 
poused the cause of Christianity in the face of inevitable 
persecution and probable death. 

Harnack ^ and Ilhlhom ^ furnish material for the 
painting of a most beautiful picture of the helping hand 
which the primitive Christian church extended to her 
members. She cared for her needy widows and orphans. 
The church at Kome had at least fifteen hundred such 
dependents under her care in the year 250 a. d. In ad- 
dition to a poor fund, the proceeds of which were devoted 
to the needs of the poorer members, the church also main- 
tained a burial fund which was used to give honorable 
burial to those members who lacked the necessary means. 
The significance of this can be understood only as we ap- 
preciate that in many of the ancient communities honor- 
able burial was one of the most coveted boons. Few 
things were dreaded more than unceremonial or dishon- 
orable burial. The churches cared for the needs and 
the comforts of the families of those who were imprisoned 
or exiled for their faith. On numerous occasions the 
church ransomed those members who were imprisoned for 
debts which they could not pay, but were willing to pay. 
It is a matter of common knowledge that the early church 
urged upon her members the duty of honest work ; but it 
is not generally known that the primitive church was ac- 
tively interested in the matter of unemployment. When 
a Christian was out of work the churches assumed the 
responsibility of finding work for him, or else gave him 
financial aid while out of work. The churches befriended 
their members in any misfortune that befell them. In 
public calamities such as famine, pestilence, or persecu- 
tion, large relief offerings were sent to distant places, and 
to people altogether unknown to the givers. The primi- 

^ The gospel of Love and Charity, Chapter 3, Book II, of 
"The Expansion of Christianity." 

2 "The History of Christian Charity in the Ancient Church." 



114 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

tive churcli was of immense practical lielp to her people. 
The church took the place in the life of her members of 
our modern lodges or fraternal societies with their sick 
and death benefits. The individual Christian found in 
the church not only a place where he could worship God, 
but also a social haven where he could safely anchor with- 
out the paralyzing fear of being swept out into the merci- 
less sea by the social undertow. And one of the specially 
fine things about this primitive Christian charity was the 
fact that the personal element was not lost in it. The 
givers and the recipients lived together in close personal 
contact. The men who gave the help and the men who 
received it were brothers — real hr others. It was very dif- 
ferent in this respect from much of the later charity of the 
church, and particularly from our modern institutional 
charity where a big institution is placed between the 
needy inmates and the kid-gloved supporters of the insti- 
tution. The personal touch of the primitive Christian 
charity was the most socially uplifting thing about it. 

This social service — this practical help which the prim- 
itive Christian church extended to her members — was 
the chief factor in the rooting of Christianity in the 
Greco-Koman world. This was more especially the case 
since the church, for more than two centuries, had to 
recruit her members largely from the lower and from the 
lower middle classes — people who could hardly under- 
stand Paul's theology, but who could and did appreciate 
the practical difference which the new religion made in 
their lives. 

It would be a mistake to infer that the communism of 
primitive Christianity — if we may call it communism at 
all — was an attempt at economic reconstruction in ac- 
cordance with a theory derived from the principles of 
their religion. The early Christians were not conscious 
of the social implications of their religion. Their prac- 
tice of communism had nothing at all to do with the 
production of goods; only with the use of it. 'Eo one 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 115 

was compelled, or even asked, to deed his property to 
the community. E"or was any one who did sell his prop- 
erty requested to give all of the proceeds to the community. 
Ananias and Sapphira had a perfect right, as members 
of the Christian community, to keep for themselves a 
part of the proceeds from the sale of their property. 
What they had no right to do, as Christians, was to lie and 
act the hypocrite in the matter. There was no legislation 
on the subject. The disposal of one's property in the in- 
terest of the community was at no time made a condition 
of membership in the Apostolic church. Some of the 
leading spirits in the Christian movement retained their 
personal property, or at least a part of it. Property was 
sold and the proceeds donated for common use only as oc- 
casions arose to make it necessary. The primitive 
Christian communism was purely the result of the frater- 
nal spirit of Jesus which so possessed his followers that 
they were constrained to devote all that they were and 
all that they had to the service of one another. The 
Master's command that they should love one another as 
he loved them was made the guiding principle of their 
daily conduct rather than an article in their religious 
creed. 

It is true, as has frequently been pointed out, that the 
donation of their personal property to the community was 
made comparatively easy by the belief that they were liv- 
ing in the last days. The majority of the early Christ- 
ians — perhaps all o£ them — ^believed that the Master 
would return to destroy or to transform the existing social 
order before their generation would pass away. Under 
the tension of such a belief property considerations cease 
to be the controlling factor in human conduct that they 
usually are. A conviction like that is a great social 
leveller. But while all this is true, it is also true 
that the unique spirit of brotherhood which placed each 
individual's possessions, whether of life or of goods, at 
the service of his fellows, was a much more universal 



116 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

and enduring practice among the Christians than is usu- 
ally supposed. It was not discontinued after the first 
unsuccessful experiment in Jerusalem. Nor did it die 
out after the passing away of the first generation of 
Christians. The Epistle of Barnabas, which, according 
to Harnack, was written as late as 131 a. d., says: 
"Thou shalt communicate in all things with thy neigh- 
bors; thou shalt not call things thine own; for if ye are 
partakers in common of things that are incorruptible, 
how much more of those things that are corruptible.'^ 
Justin, who was not converted to Christianity until after 
135 A.D.', says: "We who were before occupied by pref- 
erence with possessions and goods, now bring what we 
have to the community, and share it with every one who 
hath need." The Roman satirist Lucian, writing as 
late as 180 a. n.^ says: "It was imprest upon them 
(i. e. the Christians) by their original law-giver that they 
were all brothers, . . . with the result that they despise 
all worldly goods alike, regarding them merely as common 
property." From the testimonies of these eminent au- 
thorities it is evident that the unique fraternal spirit 
which placed the individual Christian and his possessions 
at the service of his fellow Christians prevailed in the 
Christian communities for a period of at least a century 
and a half. The fraternal spirit which radiated from 
the Founder of Christianity continued to create unique 
social units in the old pagan social order until those non- 
Christian elements, which became incorporated into 
Christianity and to which attention was called in the last 
chapter, began to smother the social spirit of the original 
Gospel. 

Whatever other factors contributed to the foreign mis- 
sionary triumphs of primitive Christianity, there is no 
doubt that the chief factor was the unique social element 
in it — the fraternal spirit which made life more livable in 
the Christian community than in the unsocial pagan 
world outside. 'Eo amount of prayer, and no amount of 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 117 

persuasive eloquence or of missionary enthusiasm, could 
have accomplished for primitive Christianity what its 
social ministry among the people whom it sought to win 
accomplished. Its chief recommendation lay in the type 
of individuals it produced and the kind of community- 
life it created. "Behold how these Christians love one 
another," was the unsolicited tribute that pagan society 
paid to the new religion that had made its way into the 
empire. This tribute explains why so many people were 
ready to espouse its cause in the face of persecution and 
death. It was a religion worth dying for. 

This same impression of serviceableness foreign mis- 
sions must make on the modern non-Christian world, or 
fail to conquer it. The Christianity which we export to 
the non-Christian people must, in a practical way, prove 
its superiority over the native religions, or fail in its ef- 
forts to dispossess them. Christianity must do more than 
give the heathen a new intellectual conception of God and 
of salvation. It must demonstrate its power to heal their 
physical diseases, to alleviate their distressing poverty, 
and to lighten the heavy social burdens which are crush- 
ing the masses of Oriental society, or it will fail to receive 
a hearing from the majority of the people. Why should 
they give up their own religion for another merely be- 
cause they are told by a stranger that theirs is wrong 
and that the stranger's is right ? They cannot be ex- 
pected to do it unless the imported religion will, like 
primitive Christianity in the Eoman empire, demonstrate 
its practical superiority over their own cults. 

If the Christian church in her ministry among the mis- 
erable people of the Orient were to carry out the instruc- 
tions of an acknowledged English authority of a genera- 
tion ago she would fail, and would deserve to fail. This 
eminent divine, in his instructions to the outgoing mis- 
sionaries of his denomination, said: "The duty of the 
missionary is to preach the Gospel, and nothing else but 



118 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

what helps preach the Gospel. His converts may be poor 
and uncivilized ; but that is not his affair ; the poor must 
have the Gospel preached to them, that is his sole duty.'^ ^ 
Such advice as this is not only unchristian, but foolish. 
A Gospel that has nothing at all to do with poverty and 
barbarism and human misery is not a Christian Gospel, 
and deserves to fail. 

On the contrary, a Gospel ministry whose purpose is 
to save the poor heathen from his social hell here on earth 
as well as from the theological hell hereafter; a Gospel 
that aims to make the heathen's life more livable; a cru- 
sade against tuberculosis which is decimating the Japan- 
ese people; a campaign against the pneumonic plague 
which frequently devastates large parts of China and 
Manchuria; rescue work among the multitudes of fallen 
women; hospitals for the lepers; and institutions for the 
many blind, will ultimately recruit more people for Jesus 
Christ than an equal amount of money and energy spent 
in mere individual evangelism, and the preaching of a 
Gospel to the poor that does not even sympathize with 
their poverty. Industrial schools in which the boys are 
taught how to build comfortable houses and where the girls 
are taught how to cook wholesome meals, will, in the end, 
win more souls for Jesus Christ than the most devoted 
preaching of a Gospel that disclaims all interest in the 
common things of life. 

And it must be said for the Christian church in the non- 
Christian world that she has come nearer the ideal of the 
kingdom of God than the church in the home lands. The 
most devoted, self-sacrificing, and practical Christian 
workers of the last century have been our foreign mis- 
sionaries. Finding themselves in the midst of appalling 
poverty, ignorance, and misery, many of them, from the 
earliest times, and often against the wishes and instruc- 
tions of the church that sent them, ministered to the 

^ See Essay on the prevaiUng method in the evangelization of 
the non- Christian World, by Robert Needham Cust. 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 119 

bodies of the people as well as to their souls. They tried 
to make their life more livable here on earth, as well as 
inspire them with the hope of bliss in heaven. From the 
very beginning many of the foreign missionaries rendered 
a real Christian social service. They tried to redeem 
Oriental society as well as make converts to the church. 
The reaction of foreign missions on the church at home 
has been a potent factor in the awakening of the church 
to her larger duty. 

ISTo one is able to estimate the apologetic value of the 
1616 hospitals and medical dispensaries, which are treat- 
ing 5,000,000 patients a year; the 111 medical schools; 
the 98 schools for nurses; the 25 institutions for the blind 
and for deaf mutes ; the 88 leper hospitals and asylums ; 
the 21 homes for the untainted children of lepers ; and the 
21 homes for fallen and diseased women, all of which are 
superintended by alien missionaries and equipped and 
maintained by foreign money. In many of the 86 col- 
leges and universities, and in the majority of the 1714 
boarding schools and high schools, equipped and main- 
tained by Christian finance, some kind of industrial train- 
ing is given. Many of the mission stations in the non- 
Christian world are being conducted on an industrial 
basis. Of the 136 missionary societies operating in In- 
dia at the present time, 47 offer industrial training along 
with their more specific religious work. At the same 
time that the missionary teaches men to repent of their 
sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, he teaches 
them how to plow their ground and to sow their seed, 
how to breed a better stock of cattle, how to grow 
healthier children, how to wash their bodies, how to make 
their clothes, and how to build their houses. And those 
mission stations that have rendered the best social ser- 
vice ^ have also been most successful in their spiritual 
ministry. The poor people may not be able to under- 
stand the missionary's catechism, but they will believe in 

1 For example that at Allahabad, India. 



120 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

the religion that has the power to break the curse of their 
physical and social bondage. They will ultimately adopt 
the religion that makes a real difference in their life. 

But we must bear in mind that our physical ministry, 
like the physical ministrations of Jesus, must aim at the 
ultimate spiritual regeneration of the people who are min- 
istered unto. The breeding of a better stock of cattle, 
the building of houses with bath-tubs, and the construc- 
ting of streets with sanitary gutters, must not be the end 
of our foreign missionary efforts, but merely a means to 
the culture of healthier bodies and nobler souls. How- 
ever, that the humanitarian work of the industrial mis- 
sions has not materialized Christianity, nor in the least 
militated against its effectiveness on Christian conduct, 
is proved by the splendid type of native Christian that 
has been produced in these stations. In the genuineness 
of their repentance, in their devotion to their Lord and 
Master, their church and their Bible; in the sacrifices 
they make for the religion of their adoption, and in the 
liberality in the support of their church, many of them 
compare very favorably with the best of our Christians 
here at home. They love the religion that has served 
them. We need not fear to give further trial to the prac- 
tical ministry that has produced such results. 

A religion that answers the needs of life, as primitive 
Christianity did in the Eoman empire, is the first essen- 
tial of success in foreign missions. 

Foreign Missions must he reinforced hy the Christian 
Civilization in the Home-Land. — Another thing is neces- 
sary, imperatively necessary. Foreign missions must be 
reinforced by our Christian civilization here at home. 
We must support our missionaries not only by our prayers 
and our offerings, but also by the life we live here in 
America. The impact of our Western civilization on the 
Orient will be the ultimate factor in determining the fate 
of Christianity in the non-Christian world. 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 121 

Up to this time Western civilization has failed to give 
adequate support to the struggling Christian church in 
the Orient. In many instances Western commerce has 
created an anti-Christian sentiment in the Orient, and has 
left a retarding influence on the work of Christian mis- 
sions. Our commerce, which is carried on primarily for 
the sake of profit for private parties, or in the selfish in- 
terest of some nominally Christian nation, has been traf- 
ficking in the bodies and the souls of the helpless people 
whom the missionaries are trying to save. One of the 
most pathetic appeals I ever listened to was made by the 
veteran John G. Paton for public sentiment in this coun- 
try against the unchristian commerce of the Western 
nations among the helpless people for whom he was at the 
time giving his life. John R. Mott, the great Christian 
statesman, said not long ago : ^^With truth it must be 
said that the Christian nations are responsible for the 
drugging of China with opium, and for debauching 
Africa with alcohol." It can be asserted on the best of 
authority that certain British business interests are re- 
sponsible for keeping gTeat multitudes of India's people 
in poverty.^ The newspapers have reported that cer- 
tain moneyed interests in the United States are making 
strenuous efforts to transfer to China the saloon which we 
have outlawed here. For the sake of profit, many of our 
Christian business men here at home, some of them very 
likely members of congTCgations that give liberally to 
foreign missions, are destroying the bodies and souls of 
the people whom the missionaries are supposed to save. 
For the sake of profit, our American business men have 
sent into the remotest corners of the earth, beer, whiskey, 
opium, cigarettes, the munitions of war, and many other 
commodities that undermine the health and the morality 
of the people. Wherever there has been an opportunity 
our Western business has been exploiting the Oriental 

1 See F. B. Fisher, "India's Silent Revolution," pp. 35-37, 5Q) 
also Herbert Adams Gibbons, "The New Map of Asia," p. 55. 



122 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

people just as it does us here at home. Many of the 
Orientals are beginning to see this. They see that we 
who are sending them missionaries have failed to christ- 
tianize our business here at home; and some of them 
ask in what sense our religion is better than theirs. 

It is only as our commerce will become more thoroughly 
christianized and thus made a means of service for all the 
people, instead of a means of profit for a few, that it will 
become a help instead of a hindrance to Christian mis- 
sions. The christianizing of our business here at home 
will be one of the most potent factors in the evangel- 
izing and the christianizing of the non-Christian world. 
If we fail to christianize our business here at home all 
our foreign missionary efforts may in the end be a wasted 
effort. 

Another retarding influence on foreign missions is the 
unchristian conduct of many of the Western men and 
women who sojourn in the Orient. Western government 
officials, business men, American and European tourists 
and pleasure seekers, usually outnumber the missionaries 
in the larger cities, especially in the sea-port towns. The 
conduct of these people is often anything but Christian. 
Eut because they come from the countries of the mission- 
aries they are classed as Christians. They mould public 
sentiment toward Christianity as much as the missionaries 
themselves. A very prominent missionary, speaking of 
the conduct of this type of foreigner, says: ^"Tt is a 
stumbling block to the humble minded convert. It shakes 
his faith to see his white brothers from Christian lands 
openly do the things which the Bible and the missionaries 
exhort him not to do, — swear, drink, gamble, profane the 
Sabbath. It brings upon him a storm of reproach from 
his neighbors and friends who revile him for being as- 
sociated with Christians.- 'Eo other temptation, or dif- 
ficulty, is so grievous to him as this.'' Missionaries tell 
us that they are constantly asked by their converts why 
their fellow Americans, who are visiting in the Oriental 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 123 

cities, do not go to church on Sundays as the native Chris- 
tians are told to do. It is a sad thing for the mission- 
ary to see his work so seriously crippled by the people 
from his own country. 

During the last decade or two the East has been coming 
into direct touch with our Western civilization through 
an ever increasing number of its own people who come to 
live with us for a while, and who see deeper into our 
life, and understand us better, than we seem to appreciate. 
One class of Orientals in particular who are getting to 
know us right well are the many students, the brightest 
and most promising of their young people, who live 
with us for a few years and observe the fruits of our 
Christian civilization at close range. They get their con- 
ception of Christianity on its home soil, where it has been 
tested for centuries. Some of them go back home the 
friends of Christianity, while others go back never to have 
anything to do with the Christian religion. In many 
cases, perhaps in the majority of cases, our great educa- 
tional institutions, and our Christian communities, have 
failed to create a pro-Christian sentiment in these 
young people, who go back to their respective countries 
and immediately assume leadership among their own 
people in almost every walk of life, — in law, medi- 
cine, politics, business, — in practically everything but 
Christianity. Their long sojourn in a Christian country 
and among Christian people has gone to waste so far as 
the work of foreign missions is concerned. 

The Vice-Mayor of Tokio, who is a member of the 
Christian church of Japan, during his recent visit to the 
United States, said that the most serious obstacle to 
Christianity in Japan is the fact that the Japanese people 
are beginning to know America. That is a serious in- 
dictment. "The young people of my country," he said, 
"cannot help seeing that Christians in America care most 
about material things, not about the things of the spirit; 
that there is very little reverence here, and many evil 



124 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

conditions. This leads them to wonder if Christianity 
is really as good as the missionaries say.'' The more 
intelligent people of the Orient see that we have failed to 
solve the problems of poverty, of vice, of caste, of women 
and child labor, of intemperance, of materialism, and of 
many other individual and social evils. This lack of 
influence which the Christian religion has had on our 
social life very forcibly counteracts anything that the poor 
missionary may say in favor of the religion which he 
represents. If the affiliation of the Oriental students with 
our Christian educaitional •institutions, and if several 
years of residence in a Christian community, will not 
convert them to Christianity, there is very little that the 
lone missionary can hope to accomplish with them or 
through them. 

As a proof of the practical efficiency of the religion 
which he represents the foreign missionary should be 
able to point his audience to results in the home land, 
where Christianity has been thoroughly tested. But in 
too many instances he may not do this; for, as the Vice- 
Mayor of Tokio has said, his audience is beginning to 
know us too well. The social inefficiency of the Chris- 
tian church here at home is beginning to condemn us be- 
fore the heathen, and is taking the wind out of the sails 
of the foreign missionary. 

Since the great war began in 1914, in which all the 
foremost Christian nations were engaged in murderous 
combat, the question has been debated: what will be the 
effect of this catastrophe on the attitude of the non-Chris- 
tian people toward the Christian religion ? We rejoice 
over the optimistic reports that have been coming to us 
from many of the missionaries themselves, and from such 
eminent authorities as John R. Mott, and others prom- 
inently connected with the work of foreign missions. 
They have informed us that this appalling calamity has 
not seriously affected the cause of foreign missions, — 
that the financial end of the work has not been crippled 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 125 

in spite of the frightful cost of the war, — that the evange- 
listic work has moved on uninterruptedly and with the 
usual number of converts, — and, best of all, that the non- 
Christian people see that the fault is with a certain pagan 
element in our civilization, and that the war, with its 
frightful violations of all the rules of civilized life, is in 
no way to be charged to the shortcomings of the Christian 
religion. 

We hope that this optimism is well founded. But we 
have our doubts. It seems to be impossible that such a 
colossal calamity like this war, — that such an appalling 
destruction of human life by Christian people, — that the 
implacable hate that has been manifested by the Christian 
nations and their people toward each other, should not 
have a sinister effect upon the attitude of the non-Chris- 
tian people toward the Christian religion. It does not 
seem possible that the Oriental people should not in some 
way associate this murderous hatred of the Christian 
people toward each other with certain short-comings of 
Christianity itself. Why should not Christianity, after 
all these years, have had a more wholesome effect upon 
the life of the Christian nations ? Why has the Chris- 
tian religion, which the missionaries have claimed to be 
the sure cure for all ills, not cured the ills of the nations 
from which the missionaries come ? The non-Christian 
people can hardly help feeling that there is something 
wrong with the Christianity which we represent. 

That there are some of them who feel that way about 
the matter is certain. In speaking of the world war, 
Count Okumi, one of the keenest minds in Japan, said: 
"Perhaps the missionaries will not be so sure now that 
they have something better to offer than we have." I 
fear that he expressed the sentiment of many of his fellow 
citizens in Japan, and of men elsewhere in the non- 
Christian w^orld. And I cannot blame them. If I were 
a citizen of Japan or China I should hesitate, I should 
consider seriously, at a time like this, before renouncing 



126 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

my own religion and courting ridicule and persecution 
for a religion that has seemingly had so little effect upon 
the nations from which the missionaries come. I fear 
that I should postpone the great decision until the atmos- 
phere had cleared a little. The pity of it is all the greater 
because this calamity came when the doors of opportunity 
were opening everywhere. 

To sum up then : To evangelize the non-Christian world 
we must continue to send missionaries and money until 
a native Christian church has been established and trained 
to carry the work to completion. To accomplish this the 
Christian religion must prove its practical superiority 
over the religions which it seeks to dispossess. And, 
finally, the work of Christian missions in the non-Chris- 
tian lands must be reinforced by our Christian civilization 
in the home-lands. The ultimate fate of the Christian 
religion in the Orient will not depend so much upon the 
number and the enthusiasm of our missionaries as upon 
the type of Christian civilization that we will develop 
here at home. I^o religion that is powerless to prevent 
war, to eradicate poverty, and to secure justice, will 
ever dominate the world. In other words: no religion 
but the one that is implied in the prophetic conception of 
the kingdom of God will ever become the religion of the 
whole human race. 

Ill 

THE EVANG-EILISTIC PROBLEMS 11^" THE HOME LAND 

The Wedkness of Our Regular Methods of Evangelism. 
— I do not wish to be understood as blaming the church 
unduly for her failure to recruit the majority of the 
people of the country, much less for the prevailing in- 
difference to the things of God. The evangelistic task is 
a difficult one. We cannot hope, by any methods that we 
may use, to enlist all the people. In every large com- 
munity there are many people who cannot be interested 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 127 

in the things that are good and clean and holy. There 
is still more animal than God in the average man. Moral 
evolution is still in its infancy as compared with physical 
evolution. Selfishness and material interests are still the 
determining factors in the average man's conduct. 

And in the average community there is still very much 
to tempt this all-too-temptable human nature. The path- 
way of the people is strewn with grievous stumbling 
blocks. The atmosphere in which they work and seek 
their recreation is tainted with a semi-pagan kind of 
commercialism which is constantly tempting them away 
from the things which the church has to offer. Any 
one who knows human nature, and who understands the 
spirit of the age, knows that there is very serious work 
ahead for the church. With the rapid spread of material- 
ism, the constant multiplication of automobiles and mov- 
ing picture houses, and the opening of Sunday to many 
kinds of business and to all kinds of amusement and dis- 
sipation, the church will have a serious time to maintain 
herself and her influence in the world. Her work was 
never more difficult than right now. 

But while all this is true, we must also confess that the 
church has hitherto made no adequate effort to reach 
the unchurched element in our communities. Our evan- 
gelistic efforts, during the last century, did not reach 
out beyond the church's own constituency. Our annual 
increase in membership has been made up almost entirely 
from the families of the church. We have been going 
through the ritual from Sunday to Sunday, and have 
preached a soothing Gospel to the pious souls who have 
cared to come to hear us, but we have not gone out after 
those who have not been coming of their own accord. 
Unlike the faithful shepherd in the Parable of the Lost 
Sheep, we have been nurturing those who have remained 
in the fold, but have neglected those who have strayed 
away. We have been at ease in Zion. 

In preparation for this study I examined the records 



128 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

of a number of representative city cliurclies and found 
that for a period of four years 98.7% of their increase 
was made up of confirmations of baptized children of the 
congregation, of people received by letter from other 
churches, and of delinquent members reinstated. Only 
1.3% of the total increase in the membership of these 
influential churches, from 1915 to 1919, was from that 
element in the community which had been unafiiliated 
with the church before. The pastor of a country charge, 
who made a similar examination of the records of some 
twenty representative town and country charges, found 
that less than 2 % of the increase, for a period of six years, 
was from the unchurched element in the community. 
Even Home Missions, until quite recently, were a means 
of conserving the constituency of the denomination, rather 
than an organized effort to evangelize the community. 
We usually organized our new missions around a nucleus 
of people trained in our catechism, or baptized according 
to our view of the rite, while we left the unchurched to 
their choice. The different sects competed with each 
other for their individual existence rather than cooperated 
with one another to evangelize the community. 

But what can we do ? How can we recruit more of the 
unchurched people of our communities ? And how can 
we interest them and hold them after we have recruited 
them? 

An Important Move. — The Federal Council of the 
Churches of Christ in America, recognizing the need of 
cooperative evangelism, has recommended, through its 
Commission on Evangelism, that the local churches co- 
operate in a systematic effort to interest the people of 
the community in the church and the things of the king- 
dom of God.' The Commission recommends that a com- 
mittee of representative local men be appointed to superin- 
tend the campaign. A series of subjects of an evangelis- 
tic nature is suggested for discussion from the local 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 129 

pulpits at the same liour each Lord's day, for a period 
of ^Ye or six weeks. Special meetings for the inspiration 
and guidance of the pastors are held. Public meetings 
and shop meetings are held to get the community awakened 
and interested. A publicity committee keeps the matter 
constantly before the public through newspaper articles, 
posters, buttons, etc. A large committee, representing all 
the churches, is appointed to take a religious census of 
the city. After the problems of evangelism have been 
discussed for a time from all the pulpits and through 
the public press, a house-to-house canvass is made, and 
the information thus gathered is tabulated and carefully 
studied. People not belonging to any church in the city, 
but expressing a preference for a certain church, are 
immediately referred to the pastor and the group of 
workers of that church. People belonging to a particular 
denomination but not affiliated with that denomination 
in the city, and expressing no preference of pastor or 
congregation, are referred to the pastor of that denomina- 
tion in whose territory they happen to reside. And 
those affiliated with no church at all are kept for the final 
"follow-up work," which marks the culmination of the 
campaign. A carefully selected group of men, represent- 
ing all the congregations, and instructed beforehand by 
"a specialist in soul- winning," will follow up these people 
and through personal efforts will endeavor to win them 
for the church and the kingdom of God. This general 
plan, adapted to local conditions, is to be repeated from 
season to season. 

Our Federation of Churches tried out this plan 
during Lent, 1919. The plan puts the -responsibility 
for the evangelization of the community upon the 
local congregations, where it belongs. The churches of 
the community must not shift their responsibility upon 
a stranger — a professional evangelist — who comes and 
goes, and who may be more concerned about the donation 
which he carries away than he is about the constructive 



130 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

commmiity results whicli lie leaves behind. Something 
was gained by getting the cburcbes to undertake the task 
together. Some valuable information was gathered. 
The conclusions of Professor Bossard as to the grip the 
Protestant church of our city has on the population was 
confirmed by the information that was gathered in this 
canvass.1 But in the matter of additions to the churches 
the experiment was a keen disappointment to many. 
Very few, if any, of the unchurched were enlisted. Our 
special efforts created scarcely a ripple of interest among 
the unchurched, especially among those who have become 
antagonistic to the church. 

Personally I was not disappointed at the practical 
failure of our experiment. We cannot hope to win large 
accessions to the church by a single campaign, no matter 
how it is conducted. It will take a number of such cam- 
paigns to awaken, first of all, our drowsy congregations, 
to say nothing of arousing our apathetic communities. 
And after all, it is not so much a matter of method, as of 
spirit, — ^not so much a matter of a program as of the 
content of the program. We cannot hope for any 
permanent results, even through such cooperative efforts 
as those recommended by the Federal CounciFs Commis- 
sion on Evangelism, unless it is our purpose to establish 
the kingdom of God rather than to build up the church. 
The Federal Council's plan is a good one, but it will 
require the spirit of the kingdom of God to make it 
effective. 

The Supreme Need of Evangelism. — The supreme need 
in evangelism, as in everything else, is the return of the 
church in both her theology and her practice to the full 
program which the kingdom of God has entrusted to 
her. The religion of the kingdom of God, as we saw in 
the first chapter, contains a message that throbs with 
genuine sympathy with everything that is human. 'No 
section of our life lies outside of the scope of its interest. 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 131 

Its ultimate purpose is to give "the abundant life" — 
physical, mental, and spiritual life — to every citizen of 
the community, and to every individual of the human ractj. 
Its ministry includes the regeneration of the community 
as well as the salvation of the individual. It takes an 
interest in the schools, the dwelling houses, the play- 
houses, the parks, and the streets of the community, as 
well as in its churches. To inspire this kingdom-vision 
in the class room of the theological seminary, and to carry 
out this kingdom-program in our denominational and 
congregational activities, and in our every day life as 
members of the church and as citizens of the common- 
wealth, is the only kind of evangelism that will meet with 
permanent success in our day. In fact the only type of 
evangelism that ever secured permanently desirable re- 
sults was that which was animated by the spirit and 
purpose of the kingdom of God. 

The evangelistic success of Jesus was largely due to 
the genuinely human element in his message and ministry. 
In the opening sermon of his Galilean ministry he stated 
his purpose in a quotation from the social message of 
Isaiah: ". . . the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, 

Because he anointed me to preach good tidings 

to the poor; 
And sent me to proclaim release to the captives, 
And recovering of sight to the blind. 
To set at liberty them that are bruised. 
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." '^ 

The faithful carrying out of this divine-human program 
was the only kind of evangelism that Jesus attempted. 
He had a heart that was full of human sympathy, and a 
message that was full of human interest. He preached 
"the good tidings" of the Fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man in simple, human language. And 
what he preached in the church, he lived in the com- 

1 Luke 4: 18-19. 



132 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

munity. He relieved tlie distressed and healed the sick. 
He clothed the naked and fed the hungry. He was a 
big brother to the poor and the outcast. His message and 
his ministry touched life at every point. 

And there was a ready response to Jesus' ministry of 
sympathy and of practical helpfulness. "The common 
people heard him gladly." They followed him in crowds, 
not only to banquet on his loaves and fishes, or out of 
mere curiosity, but also because they instinctively felt that 
he was a true friend, and that his purpose was to serve 
them.. Jesus won the heart of the common people where- 
ever he came into touch with them. His popularity 
with the masses protected him for a whole year against 
the violence of his powerful enemies. Professor Rau- 
schenbusch says: "His midnight arrest, his hasty trial, 
and the anxious efforts to work on the feelings of the 
crowd are all tributes to his good standing with the com- 
mon people." ^ There is no doubt that Jesus would have 
been eminently successful in his evangelistic efforts with 
the masses of Palestine if the religious and the political 
authorities had not interfered. In spite of the organ- 
ized opposition to him, he created sufficient faith in his 
Gospel and loyalty to himself in two brief years to with- 
stand all future efforts to destroy his influence. That 
was successful evangelism. But he followed no made- 
to-order methods. He had no special schemes or clever 
devices to attract attention to himself, or to create interest 
in what he had to say. It was the big-brother spirit 
in Jesus, and the element of service in his religion, that 
drew the people. 

We noticed in the preceding section that it was this 
same serviceable element in primitive Christianity that 
won its way into the heart of the Roman empire. And 
it is my conviction that any religion that answers the 
needs of life as the religion of Jesus did, and as primitive 
Christianity did, and as it is the purpose of the religion 

1 "Christianity and The Social Crisis," p. 84. 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 133 

of the kingdom of God to do, will, in any community and 
in any age, compel the respect and the support of those 
people whose character and influence determine the destiny 
of society. One may well wonder what the influence of 
organized Christianity would have been in the evolution 
of society if the fundamental precept of Jesus: that we 
love one another as he loved us, had continued to be the 
guiding principle of our daily conduct, instead of hav- 
ing been reverently buried in the liturgy of our Com- 
munion Service. There is no question that the evangel- 
istic power of the church would have been much greater 
if there had not been certain foreign elements in our 
religious thought and practice which usurped the place of 
that primitive spirit of good-will which placed every mem- 
ber of the church, with all his possessions, at the service 
of his fellows. A religion that answers the needs of 
life has evangelistic power. The people to whom such 
a religion will not appeal can be discounted in our esti- 
mate of the moral and spiritual assets of the community. 

The Lach of Evangelistic Appeal in Those Elements 
of Our Religion luhich are Foreign to the Prophetic 
Conception of the Kingdom. — Those elements in our 
religious life which are foreign to the ideals of the king- 
dom of God have been harmful in two directions. On 
the one hand, they have dampened the church's zeal for 
social righteousness, and on the other hand, they have 
destroyed her power to appeal to that influential element 
in modern society which is interested in social righteous- 
ness. There are three things in particular that have 
occupied a very prominent place in organized Christianity 
for nineteen centuries and which no amount of enthusiasm 
can make appeal to the representative men and women of 
our day, no matter how much they may have appealed 
to the people of an earlier day. 

Prominent among the influences in side-tracking the 
Christian church from the reconstructive social pro- 



134 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

gram which is implied in the principles of the king- 
dom of God was the spirit of other-worldism, which may 
have had its origin in something that Jesus himself had 
said, or in a misunderstanding of something that he had 
said; or it may have found its way into primitive Chris- 
tianity through the Apocalyptic-Jewish influence which 
was quite potent in the Apostolic circle. But no matter 
what the source of it was, the conspicuous place which this 
unsocial spirit has held in the thought and life of the 
church, from that day to this, has, on the one hand, de- 
stroyed her passion for social regeneration, and, on the 
other, her power to enlist the support and compel the 
respect of the most influential and powerful elements in 
society today. Before Christianity had become two 
decades old the idea of the speedy return of the Lord to 
destroy the earth diverted the attention of the church 
from social salvation to individual bliss in heaven. 

Under the dominance of the Greek influence the very 
content of the Christian Gospel became other-worldly. 
Jesus Christ became essentially a redeemer from earthli- 
ness. His supreme gift was that of immortality. By 
baptism the germ of the immortal life was implanted, and 
by the Holy Communion it was nurtured. The eucharist 
was called ^^the medicine of immortality." The other- 
world conception of religion came to a climax in Augus- 
tine's "City of God." For nine years prior to his conver- 
sion to Christianity Augustine had been "a hearer" of 
the Manichsean sect, and his "City of God," which has ex- 
erted a greater influence on Christian theology than the 
Gospels, clearly shows the marks of his earlier Manichsean 
associations. Manichseism was saturated with Greek 
dualism, and with the Greek contempt for matter as the 
seat of all corruption and evil. This unsocial view of life 
was immortalized in Augustine's "City of God." The city 
of the world, conceived as the city of Satan, exists side 
by side with the City of God through all history. The 
citizens of the kingdom are declared to be only pilgrims 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 135 

in the city of the world, escaping from it at death, but 
not at all concerned about winning this present evil world 
for God. The church and the religion which it repre- 
sented lost all vital contact with the world that was so 
sadly in need of salvation. The church of the Middle 
Ages was completely dominated by these dualistic-other- 
world conceptions. This unsocial spirit came to ripe 
fruitage in asceticism and monasticism. The saint's 
chief duty was to keep himself unspotted from the world, 
which he tried to accomplish by getting out of the world 
and burying himself in a cloister in the mountains, while 
the devil was left free to manage his big worldly domain. 

Protestantism failed to save Christianity from the 
dwarfing influence of other-worldism. The Sixteenth 
Century Reformation was primarily an ecclesiastical re- 
formation. Whatever social reformation followed from 
the movement came as a by-product. It was not the 
intention that society should be reformed, or that the 
reformed church should become an instrument of social 
regeneration. The church continued to be conceived of 
as an ark of safety rather than an instrument of social 
regeneration. Her chief duty was to get her members 
safely out of this evil world into the other world. The 
purpose of religion was to prepare men to die peacefully, 
rather than help them to live justly and righteously. 
This other- world spirit animates the major portion of our 
liturgy, the majority of our hymns, and a great part of 
our theology even today. Under the narcotic influence 
of this unsocial theology the Protestant church, like the 
Catholic church, has been more concerned about increas- 
ing the population of heaven than about regenerating 
the earth. 

Since the world war, premilennarianism has been 
spreading over Europe and America with surprising suc- 
cess. We were amazed last spring to learn that the 
premillenarian influence was strong enough to divide the 
sentiment and the vote of one of the greatest and most 



136 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

influential Protestant denominations on one of the most 
vital questions that has confronted the church for a cen- 
tury. Another one of our great denominations fears a 
possible disruption through this influence which has en- 
trenched itself within its bounds. While all good and 
sensible men should cooperate in rebuilding society in 
accordance with the kingdom-principles of brotherhood 
and justice, millions of Christians are complacently wait- 
ing for the Lord to come and destroy this hopelessly evil 
world. ]^ot only do they, as Christians, refuse to join in 
any social service movements or programs, but they 
strenuously insist that the church must not engage in any 
such efforts. 

Whatever drawing power this type of religion may have 
had in other ages, it is clear to any one who understands 
the spirit of our age, that it can no longer be made to 
appeal to the representative men and women of our re- 
spective communities. Great choruses augumented by 
brass bands, enthusiastic prayer-meetings, and cooperative 
evangelistic campaigns, will all alike fail to drive this 
type of religion home to the ear and the heart of our age. 
It fails to appeal to the ever-increasing host of social- 
minded men and women, who are endeavoring, by rational 
methods, to make this old world a healthier, happier, and 
better place in which to live. We cannot hope to interest 
these people in an institution that has more to say about 
"mansions in the skies" than about uninhabitable tene- 
ments and flats on earth. They will not affiliate them- 
selves with an institution whose program includes only 
that segment of life that lies beyond the unexplored 
horizon. And, what is just as bad from the social point 
of view, those people who ^^ill be drawn into the church 
by this type of Gospel, whether they be few or many, 
will not be fitted for the stern social duties which the 
kingdom of God implies.- 

Another thing that has destroyed the church's power 
to appeal to large and influential classes of modem men 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 137 

and women is the dogmatizing spirit in theology with its 
tendency toward fixedness. Christianity began as a 
simple Gospel of brotherly love declared in simple, human 
language. It was like a spring garden fresh with life, 
rather than an herbarium of dried definitions. But un- 
fortunately after the doctrinal controversies of the fourth 
and fifth centuries, Christianity began to go to seed in 
dogmas. The essence of Christianity was summed up in 
things that had to be believed, rather than in a life that 
had to be lived. The opening words of the Athanasian 
Creed state: "Whoever would be saved, before all things 
it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith; which 
faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, 
without doubt he shall perish everlastingly." This cath- 
olic faith is then set forth in a number of incomprehensible 
declarations on the relation between the persons of the 
Godhead. For centuries the ablest intellects of the 
church devoted their time and energy to the formulation 
and defense of dogmas, many of which, as Professor 
Rudolph Eucken has said, "are neither rooted in the 
Gospels, nor related to life.'' 

Intellectually the Protestant Reformation was an at- 
tempt to get back of the decrees of popes and councils to 
the living roots of the Christian religion. But Protestant- 
ism again made creedal faith rather than duty to one's 
neighbor the test of orthodoxy. All of the great Protes- 
tant Confessions made creedal faith the supreme require- 
ment. What a man believed concerning certain mysteries 
was of more religious significance in the early Protestant 
circles than the way he conducted his business or the way 
he behaved himself in politics. The fundamental re- 
quirement for membership in the Protestant church today 
is faith in certain doctrines, — mental assent to certain 
definitions of the Trinity, of revelation and inspiration, 
of sin and salvation, of the church and the sacraments. 
The heroic spirit of Protestantism, which defied the pope 
and his hierarchy, and demanded the right to do its own 



138 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

thinking, has again been sealed up in its own creeds and 
dogmas which succeeding generations have had to accept 
without the right to question or to investigate for them- 
selves. 

This is no protest against creeds, much less against 
theology. It is only a protest against fixedness in our 
theologizing, and against the right to question what has 
thus become fixed. By investing her creeds with the 
augustness of infallibility, the church has been discourag- 
ing original thinking. In this way one generation has 
been putting mental shackles upon succeeding genera- 
tions, which is an evil that we may not tolerate, whether 
it is done in the name of religion or in any other name. 
In this way, too, suceeding generations have been denied 
the right to check off the errors of past generations. In 
our practical life we do not despise theory; but our 
theories must be confirmed by practice, or we will give 
them up as false. If our theory for the construction of 
a railroad curve results in the ditching of the trains, we 
will revise our theory. And we should not do otherwise 
in our religious practice. The practical, or moral test 
of a creed is : does it work ? Have our creeds resulted 
in the establishing of the kingdom of God on earth? 
Have they resulted in the practice of the kingdom-ideals 
and principles in our social relationships ? If they have 
not, they are, to that extent at least, not true, and should 
be exchanged for creeds and theories that will bring the 
kingdom. 

In the degree that the church stopped growing intel- 
lectually, and that she ceased to adapt her message and her 
ministry to the growing, changing order of things, she 
lost her power to appeal to the growing men and women 
of our modern world. We cannot expect men and women 
who are grounded in the scientific and social conceptions 
of the twentieth century to be drawn by an institution 
whose fundamental conceptions became fossilized cen- 
turies ago, and the infallibility of which may not be 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 139 

questioned. The cliurcli's obstinate holding to obsolete 
views and worn-out creeds has resulted in the loss of 
multitudes of scientifically and philosophically trained 
people. Men of the modern spirit cannot be interested in 
an archaic theology. In this way the church, as we had 
occasion to observe in another connection^ has been losing 
her grip on the intellectual leaders of our age. The con- 
structive minds of today are not interested either in the 
church's theology or in her program of salvation. Each 
year a small army of our brightest young people are 
educated out of the church, or into indifference to the 
religion which the church represents. And the fault is 
not any more that of a Godless system of education than 
it is that of a static system of theology. I am convinced 
that many good people who have lost interest in an archaic 
theology would give their support to the human religion 
and the practical programme of the kingdom of God. The 
people who cannot be interested in the theology and the 
ministry of the kingdom of God can safely be discounted 
in an inventory of the moral assets of the community. 
'No matter how numerous they may be, they are not the 
kind of persons whose influence will count for much in 
the shaping and determining of the policy of the new age. 
A third thing that has been destroying the church's 
evangelistic power in our modern world is the continued 
over-emphasizing of ecclesiasticism or churchism. Chris- 
tianity began as a simple brotherhood; and the church 
was called into being to perpetuate this brotherhood. 
But quite early in its history Christianity became identi- 
fied with churchianity. As soon as the church came into 
possession of great wealth and power, she began to de- 
velop an elaborate system of ecclesiastical machinery. 
She began to dissipate her life keeping her machinery 
running. She held services, rather than rendered 
service. She substituted her own program for the pro- 
gram of the kingdom. She became an end to be served, 
rather than a means of service. The Catholic communi- 



140 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

ties were drained of their resources to serve the church, 
while the church made no effort to return an equivalent 
in service. More money was spent for ecclesiastical 
paraphernalia than for constructive welfare work. In the 
best days of Spain the church spent more money for the 
candles on her alters than she spent for education. ISTo 
wonder that Spain collapsed from an internal decay ; and 
no wonder that the Spanish church is a dead issue. 

In times of universal ignorance and superstition, and 
when the church possessed unlimited power, she could 
command allegiance to herself. The people had to heed 
her wishes whether they wanted to or not. But that day 
is past. The only way that the church can command re- 
spect and support in our day is through the service that 
she renders. She must convince the people that she is 
not merely holding services, but that she is really render- 
ing service, or she will lose them. In his recent books: 
''In the Shadow of the Cathedral" and 'The Fruit of the 
Vine,'' Blasco Ibanez, with the insight of the social 
philosopher and with the charm of the literary genius, 
has shown us the superb mass of wonderful architecture 
reared by churchly piety in Spain, and also the subter- 
ranean fires of social discontent which are, at this very 
hour, undermining it all. And not only in the country 
of Ibanez, but all over Europe, the people are deserting 
the institution that has been holding costly services that 
have not served. 

Many of our Protestant congregations in our own coun- 
try are spending too much money and energy in holding 
services which really do not serve. Like the Jewish 
church in the days of the prophets and Jesus, and like 
the Catholic church during the Middle Ages, we are still 
over-emphasizing the secondary matters of the religious 
program, while we slight the fundamentals. We are 
still exalting the holding of services above the rendering 
of service. The Scriptural injunction "to worship the 
Lord in the beauty of holiness" no doubt implies a beauti- 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 141 

ful clmrcli building and a dignified churcli service. But 
I believe that we fulfill the spirit of this injunction better 
by giving the poor of our respective communities more 
habitable dwelling houses and cleaner streets than we do 
by holding beautiful services in costly church buildings 
to which the really needy people will not come, and in 
which they would not be welcome if they did come. In 
every great city in our country we can find magnificent 
church buildings in which costly services are being held 
within sight and sound of the uninhabitable quarters of 
the poor, whose miserable conditions have not been affected 
in the least by these religious services. In not a few cases 
much of the revenue to run the ecclesiastical machinery 
comes from rents on tenements, and from mortgages on 
slum properties. Multitudes of social-spirited people are 
repelled, rather than attracted, by an institution that 
spends so much money and energy in holding services 
which do not seem to render any real service. 

It is my conviction that the church's departure, in both 
her theology and her practice, from the divine-human 
program of the kingdom of God, is the chief cause of 
her waning power and influence over the intellectual and 
the social leaders of our day. In the degree that the 
emphasis has been shifted from this real world to the 
world that is to come; and from love to our neighbor to 
speculations about incomprehensible things ; and from the 
church as a means of service to an institution that holds 
services, the church has sacrificed her power to appeal to 
the representative men and women of the modern world. 
Until the church will return to the doctrine and the min- 
istry of the kingdom of God, all her special efforts and her 
clever schemes to regain her lost ground will avail her but 
little. 

The Case of the Church and the Industrial Laborers. — 
It is in her relation to the great class of wage-earners, 
especially the organized industrial laborers, that the 



142 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

cliurcli faces her most serious evangelistic problem. It is 
here that her waning influence during the last few decades 
has been most evident. And the trouble is not so much the 
growing materialism and irreligion of the workers, as a 
well defined grievance which they have against the church. 

In its mildest form the workers' charge against the 
church is that she has always been indifferent, either 
ignorantly or wilfully, to those economic and industrial 
affairs which are so vital to them. They charge her with 
having busied herself with trifling matters, while she has 
been indifferent to the things which involve the life or 
death of their class. They charge her with having strained 
at the gnats in our social life, while she swallowed the 
camel of industrial iniquity. 

And there is an element of truth in their charges. The 
church has vigorously condemned such things as card- 
playing, dancing, and theater-going, while only here and 
there has a timid voice been raised in protest against the 
unjust distribution of the conjointly produced wealth of 
the average community, which makes it possible for a few 
to revel in extravagance and luxury, while multitudes lack 
the bare necessities of life. It has not been an unusual 
thing to hear influential preachers and theological pro- 
fessors deny that the church has anything to do with such 
"secular things" as work and wages. The very things 
that mean the life or death of the workers have been de- 
clared to be outside of the sphere of the church's thought 
and activity. A sermon on the proper mode of baptism 
(i. e., whether the water should be applied to the head or 
the feet, or whether the subject should be dipped under 
the water or the water be sprinkled on his head) is a very 
proper theme for a Sabbath discourse. I have heard a 
number of very eloquent sermons on this subject in my 
time. But to speak of a living wage, or an eight hour 
day, or the need of steady employment, is dragging 
"worldly themes" into the pulpit. 

During a sharp economic crisis in England a short 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 143 

time before the war, when many thousands of people were 
out of employment for a long time, Mr. Kier Hardee, one 
of England's noted labor leaders, appealed to one of the 
Anglican bishops for advice and help. But the bishop 
replied that he worked seventeen hours a day and had no 
time for such problems as unemployment, to which Mr. 
Hardee retorted: that an institution that requires seven- 
teen hours a day for organization, and leaves no time for 
a single thought about starving and despairing men and 
women and children, has no message for our age. The 
socialist was right and the bishop was wrong. The church 
dare not, on peril of her own soul, continue to slight the 
problems of work and wages around which so much of our 
individual and social life revolves. It is not difficult to 
see why an institution that spends seventeen hours a day 
running ecclesiastical machinery, while it confesses itself 
to be unconcerned about the most fundamental things in 
the life of the majority of the people, loses its good stand- 
ing in the community. 

Among the more radical groups of industrial workers 
the gxievance against the church has become more acute. 
They charge her not only with having been indifferent to 
social and industrial unrighteousness, but with having 
deliberately played into the hands of the exploiting classes. 
They feel that the church, from the days of feudal serfdom 
on down to our own day of capitalistic autocracy, has 
favored the party that has had the money and the influence 
to support her. They claim that where the church has 
understood the conditions and has sympathized with the 
workers, she has lacked the moral courage to stand for her 
convictions. 

In an address at a recent meeting of industrial workers, 
I tried to show them the just and righteous social order 
that is implied in the Christian conception of the kingdom 
of God, and that the mission of the church is to help us 
realize these social ideals. In the free discussion that 
followed there was a very general expression of lack of 



144 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

confidence in the church as a factor in social regeneration. 
In answer to the damaging charges that were made against 
the church by some of the radicals, I referred to the social 
creed of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in 
America, and to the liberal attitude of the Industrial 
Eelations Department of the Inter-Church World Move- 
ment .1 But they replied that the Federal Council and the 
Industrial Relations Department of the Inter-Church 
Movement represent only the sentiment of a few socially- 
minded individuals who are not directly responsible to 
any congregation or denomination. They claimed that 
the average preacher who has wealthy members is afraid 
to preach the Gospel of Jesus with all its social implica- 
tions. The leader in the discussion, an exceptionally well- 
informed man, said that the experience of labor leaders 
in this country and in Europe was to find the churches 
either silent, or else the spokesmen of the capitalists. 
This is the prevailing feeling in labor circles. 

It is what the local churches do in actual situations, 
rather than the resolutions that are passed by councils and 
committees, that determines the attitude of the laboring 
men. At the meeting just referred to I was reminded 
of the attitude of the churches of my own community in 
the strike at the Bethlehem Steel Mills, in 1910, some- 
thing that I had almost forgotten, but which they remem- 
bered with much bitterness. As they explained the case, 
and as I remember the facts, one of the issues of the strike 
was the demand for release from Sunday work, a thing 
for which the church has always stood, at least theoret- 
ically. A committee composed of Dr. Charles Stelzle, 
Dr. Josiah Strong, and Paul U. Kellogg, representing the 
Social Service Commission of the Federal Council of 
Churches, came to Bethlehem and investigated the condi- 
tions. Their report was, on the whole, favorable to the 
strikers. And I have personal reasons to believe that the 
majority of the ministers of Bethlehem and of South 
Bethlehem were in sympathy with the strikers, many of 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 145 

whom, as the report of the Federal Bureau of Labor 
shows, were working seven days of the week and for shame- 
fully low wages. ^ But the Industrial Commission of 
Bethlehem, comiposed of prominent business and pro- 
fessional men, some of them very likely leaders in the 
church life of the city, passed a resolution condemning 
the strikers and extolling the virtues and the services of 
the steel corporation. This resolution was followed by 
another one drawn up by a committee of the Bethlehem 
Ministerial Association, the committee consisting of 
the pastors of three congTegations which had indirectly 
been the beneficiaries of the steel company's prosperity. 
This resolution which, as I was told by a Bethlehem 
minister, was never submitted to the Ministerial As- 
sociation for their approval or disapproval, favored 
the corporation, and was published in the Bethlehem 
papers as if it represented the sentiment of the clergy of 
the city. The error was never corrected, and the 
impression prevails to this day in labor circles through- 
out the Lehigh Valley that the churches of this community 
were the spokesmen of Mr. Schwab and his corporation. 
In December, 1911, Mr. John A. Fitch published an 
article, in the Survey, on : "The Bethlehem Churches and 
the Steel Workers,'' in which he placed Bethlehem and its 
churches in a very unfavorable light in this crisis. That 
article by Mr. Fitch, which was very widely read in labor 
circles, and the two resolutions just referred to, injured 
the church in the Lehigh Valley more than half a dozen 
professional evangelists, with their brass bands, or than 

^ The report of the Federal Bureau of Labor, Senate Docu- 
ment No. 521, of the Sixty-First Congress, second session, shows 
that 2,628 of the 9,291 of the employees were regularly work- 
ing seven days of the week. During the month prior to the 
strike 4,041 men worked seven days of the week. The report 
also declares that 5,618 men, or 61% of the total working force, 
got only 18^ an hour, or $2.16 for a twelve hour day, while 
31% of the total working force got 14^ an hour or $1.68 for a 
twelve hour day. That was in 1910. 



146 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

half a dozen cooperative evangelistic campaigns, can rec- 
tify. The church must he exceedingly careful not to 
create the impression that, right or wrong, she plays on the 
side that has the money and the influence to support her. 

And there is a third class of industrial laborers whose 
grievance against the church has taken the form of defi.ant 
and systematic opposition. We have not suffered much, 
as yet, from this extreme attitude of labor here in Amer- 
ica; but in Europe, especially in Continental Europe, it 
is the prevailing attitude. The ultra radicals not only 
feel that the church has been on the side of the moneyed 
class for selfish or cowardly reasons, but they contend that 
the church's program of salvation is, in its very essence, 
of such a nature as to disqualify her as a factor in the 
matter of social regeneration. They contend that the 
church's individualistic conception of salvation, and that 
her doctrines of future rewards and punishments, unfit 
her membership for the stern struggle which the regenera- 
tion of the industrial order necessarily requires. They 
feel that faith in the future world and the hope of bliss in 
heaven have a tendency to keep men content with their 
undeserved poverty and their unnecessary misery on earth. 
They feel that the church is, for these reasons, an obstruc- 
tion in the way of social progress and should be destroyed. 

Instead of merely denouncing and abusing the church 
as the friend of the capitalist, the ultra radicals of Conti- 
nental Europe and elsewhere, have been opposing a 
carefully thought-out philosophy of their own against the 
theology of the church. Just as the ancient Greek 
philosopher Epicurus tabooed all faith in the gods and the 
future life in the interest of his hedonistic philosophy, so 
these extreme social radicals have banished from their 
social creed every reference to the future life. They do 
this in the interest of the most positive efforts for social 
revolution. In certain sections of Europe, and even here 
in America, the ultra radicals have been systematically 
teaching their children that there is no God, that there is 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 147 

no heaven and no hell, that they have no immortal souls, 
and that there are no such things as future rewards and 
punishments as taught by the church. They do this, not 
because they are such wicked infidels at heart, hut because 
they feel that faith in these things will destroy that social 
passion in men which is so essential in the stern struggle 
in which they are interested. And no matter what we 
may think of their philosophy, either from an ethical or 
from an economic point of view, it is being hailed by many 
thousands of people with all the passion and the fervor of 
a new religion, ^o amount of anathematizing will change 
the situation in the least. Bulls of excommunication, and 
the horrors of purgatory or of hell, will not intimidate 
them at all. Their philosophy makes them as insensible 
to all kinds of other-world fears or favors as the fabled 
salamander is to fire. 

In Continental Europe, I fear, the case between the 
church and the masses in general and the industrial 
laborers in particular is hopeless. The church failed to 
see the widening chasm that was forming between herself 
and the people until it was too late to bridge it over. In 
no part of Soviet Russia has the church retained her hold 
on the people. In many sections of Russia organized 
religion has shared the same fate as the Romanoff govern- 
ment whose ally it had been. In the industrial centers of 
the new Germany as many people have openly renounced 
the church as still belong to it. And the fault in both of 
these countries is more that of the church than of the 
people. The church ceased to serve many years ago, and 
now she ceases to live. Some one has aptly said that the 
church, in many sections of Continental Europe, finds her- 
self ditched with punctured tires at the very time when 
she should lead the way in the reconstruction of the broken 
down social order. May God save us from the same plight 
here in America! 

Among the English speaking working people, especially 
in the United States and in Canada, the situation is not 



148 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of Go^ 

yet hopeless. The irreconcilable anti-church spirit of the 
European labor movement has not yet seriously affected 
the average American industrial laborer. The church in 
America still has a chance to save herself from the plight 
of the European church if she v^ill seize the opportunity 
now. The church must not become a partisan in the con- 
flict between capital and labor. What she must do is to 
teach and practice the ideals and principles of the king- 
dom of God. She must, without fear or favor, apply the 
kingdom-principles of brotherhood and service, of justice 
and fairness, to the problems of industry. As Dr. Charles 
Stelzle has pointed out, in ''The Social Application of 
Religion," the church must make both parties in the con- 
flict feel that she stands only for so much of the present 
system as is in accordance with the principles and the mo- 
tives laid down by Jesus. She must make both parties 
feel that she is opposed to any part or to any practice of the 
present system that violates these principles. She must 
see the truth clearly and declare it fearlessly regardless of 
which party may be pleased or angered by it. In the faith- 
ful ministry of the kingdom lies the church's sole duty and 
only hope. I am not at all hopeful that any great number 
of the present generation of estranged workingmen can be 
won back to the church. But I am confident that many 
of their children and grand-children can be won if the 
whole church will attempt to carry out the whole pro- 
gram which the religion of the kingdom of God implies. 
I have specially emphasized the case of the church and 
the laboring people because of its great importance. The 
industrial laborers are a great and mighty host whom no 
institution can afford to neglect or alienate. The modern 
working man is demanding "a place in the sun," and he 
will get it. The laboring people will be one of the most 
potent factors in determining the policy and shaping the 
destiny of the future social order. The institution that 
fails to hold their confidence and respect will separate 
itself from one of the most powerful social forces of the 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 149 

future. In the last public address that I heard Professor 
Walter Eauschenbusch deliver, he raised the question: 
^^What will it profit the church if she will convert 
1,000,000 people in China and Japan, and lose 1,000,000 
working people here at home ?" The plain fact is that it 
would profit her nothing at all. The result would have 
to be expressed by a minus sign. The loss of 1,000,000 
working people here in America would cancel the gain 
from the conversion of 10,000,000 people in any part of 
the non-Christian world. J^owhere else could the Chris- 
tian church win 1,000,000 recruits who would mean so 
much for the kingdom of God in this day of social 
rebuilding as from among the intelligent English-speaking 
working people. Here is one of the church's greatest 
problems. The church needs the working people, and the 
working people need the church. Society would suffer an 
irreparable loss if the church and organized labor should 
become permanently divorced. From a purely selfish 
point of view, the church could better aiford to be divorced 
from capital than from labor. 

Other Unevangelized Classes. — In every large commun- 
ity there are many people who do not belong to any of the 
classes that have thus far been mentioned, and who cannot 
be won by the individualistic type of evangelism. There 
are many who have gone astray not as individual entities, 
but as members of society; and it is only as society itself 
is won for the kingdom of God that these individuals can 
be ^von. They have gone astray not necessarily because 
of the innate perversity of their wills, but because they 
are the victims of a bad environment. They are the vic- 
tims of poor breeding, bad housing, under-nourishment, 
and unwholesome amusements. It is difficult in all cases, 
and in many cases altogether impossible, for men and 
women born and reared in rooms without proper light and 
ventilation, in surroundings of filth and squalor, over- 
worked and under-nourished as many of them are, to feel 



150 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

the appeal of the finer and nobler things of life. Their 
moral as well as their aesthetic sense is stunted. And the 
fault is just as much that of society as their own. The 
only type of evangelism that can ever hope to win this 
class of people is that which aims at winning the social 
order itself for God. The only type of evangelism that 
will have any permanent effect upon the social outcasts 
is that which takes an interest in everything that concerns 
the community's life, — not only its churches, but also its 
schools, its dwelling houses, its markets, its streets, its 
work, its play, its health, its everything. 

Professor Clarence A. Beckwith, of the University of 
Chicago, in his stimulating book : "The Church, the People, 
and the Age," thus summarizes the church's present task 
and duty: ^'ISlot until it rediscovers in the new social 
environment and consciously defines and dedicates itself 
to its task will it compel the allegiance of both its own 
members and of the people of the community in which it 
is placed. Its task may be different or simpler in one 
community than in another — here religious, there educa- 
tional, elsewhere social, or all of these in various combi- 
nations and degrees. Its only justification for existence 
even lies in the words of Jesus, ^I am in the midst of you 
as one that serveth.' All over our land are discarded 
buildings which tell their own tragic tale: because they 
ceased to serve they ceased to live. ISTot long will a com- 
munity care for a church that cares little or nothing for 
it." ^ 

The supreme call of evangelism is the call for a religion ^ 
that serves^ — a religion that answers all the needs of the 
community's life.' The church, as an instrument of the 
kingdom of God, must be in the midst of the community 
"as one that serves," rather than as one that holds 
services. If the church will pour out her life that the 
people of the community may have "the abundant life," 

ip. 605. 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 151 

she will save herself for a mission of everlasting use- 
fulness, even if there v^^ill continue to be many selfish 
and materialistic individuals who cannot be won as 
members. 

Getting the Message to the People. — On the one hand, 
the evangelism of the kingdom implies a vital message, a 
message that takes an interest in life; and, on the other 
hand, it implies adequate ways and means of getting our 
message into vital touch with the people. 

Jesus did more than preach a vital Gospel. He fol- 
lowed up his preaching with persistent personal work with 
individuals. He did not wait in the Temple, or in some 
convenient synagogue, for the people to come to him ; but 
he carried his message after them. The people followed 
Jesus, but he also followed the people. In his brief min- 
istry, aided by no conveniences for travel, he came into 
close personal touch with many people from the Lebanon 
Mountains to Jerusalem, and from the Mediterranean Sea 
to Perea. A number of these people were set on fire by 
the plain evangelist from JSTazareth. And it was accom- 
plished by the preaching of a vital Gospel, and through 
systematic personal work with individuals. 

His last command to his disciples was that they should 
go and do as he had done. They were to preach his Gospel 
and to continue his practical work among the people. 
And that is what they did. Their preaching may not 
always have had the vital ring in it that the Master's had ; 
but what they lacked in preaching ability, they made up 
through their persistent personal work with individuals. 
Like Jesus they carried their message after the people. 
They spoke religion to the people in their homes and on 
the streets, in the market places where they came to do 
their business, and on the river banks where they met for 
recreation and prayer. That little band of Christian 
disciples planted congregations in the most important 
communities of the known world before the last one of 



152 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

them was dead. And the secret of it was a vital Gospel, 
plus the personal work of consecrated individuals with 
individuals. 

Modern business has adopted similar methods. A live 
business concern will not manufacture a good article, and 
then wait for willing purchasers; but it will carry the 
goods after the people, and will make an effort to solicit 
their interest. A few years ago, for example, a manu- 
facturing concern in one of our large cities made a simple 
article of food called "corn flakes." The firm did not build 
a number of fine store houses at convenient places to 
display their goods, and then waited for trade. On the 
contrary, they launched a systematic and comprehensive 
advertising campaign. Not only did every newspaper and 
magazine in the country contain the good news of the 
notable discovery in the world of eatables, but every door 
bell in every city and town throughout the country was 
rung, and every house-wife was given a sample of corn 
flakes. The result was almost miraculous. All of us 
simultaneously began to eat corn flakes for breakfast. It 
was not because of the magic virtue of corn flakes, but 
because of the scientific way of getting the article before 
the people. Advertising and salesmanship have become 
both a science and an art. Special schools have been 
established for the purpose of training men to advertise 
and to. sell goods. Some of our foremost universities have 
recently added special departments in scientific advertis- 
ing and salesmanship. The phenomenal success of certain 
lines of big business and scientific advertising and sales- 
manship have gone hand in hand. 

Jesus, on one occasion, said that "the sons of this earth 
are for their generation wiser than the children of light.'' 
Modern business has certainly been wiser in devising ways 
and means of getting its goods before the people than the 
church has been. The church has made very little effort 
to get her goods before those people who do not come to 
her of their own accord. It is only in rare cases that any- 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 153 

thing like scientific advertising has been attempted by the 
church. As a rule church advertising has been opposed 
by the hyper-churchly element as an undignified, worldly 
innovation. They tell us that the church must not com- 
promise with the ways of the w^orld ; that she must depend 
for success upon the dignity of her spiritual appeal. We 
believe in the dignity of the church's appeal ; but we also 
know that the prolonged resting on her dignity is putting 
her out of business. There is a business side as well as a 
spiritual side to our church work. If the church really 
feels that she has the spiritual goods that the world needs, 
she must not hesitate to make a careful study of the best 
ways and means of getting her goods before the people. 
By confining ourselves to the preaching of the Gospel in 
our churches on Sundays, as has been our custom for many 
years, we are not reaching the number of people we should 
reach, nor can we hope in this way to reach the class of 
people whom we ought to reach. 

There is imperative need, first of all, for organized and 
w^ell directed personal work among the membership of the 
local congregation. The majority of Protestant congrega- 
tions of average size are out of touch with their own 
people. We noticed, in the first section of this chapter, 
that the Protestant churches of the average American com- 
munity come into weekly touch with only about 20% of 
their own membership. We come into weekly touch with 
less than half of the children enrolled in our Sunday 
Schools. It is clear that we must mobilize and vitalize 
the forces that we have already recruited before we 
can carry out any aggressive program of community 
evangelization or of world evangelization. An army that 
can rally only 20% of its soldiers to the mess table and to 
the daily drill is defeated before the battle begins. Vital 
preaching, efficient Sunday school teaching, good music, a 
beautiful and comfortable church building, and a dignified 
and attractive church service, are all important factors in 
the creating and maintaining of interest in the church. 



154 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

But these things are not all that is necessary. These 
important things must be supplemented by the equally 
important personal work of individuals with individuals. 
We must solicit the interest of the people — even of our 
own people — as persistently as the travelling salesman 
solicits his trade. In these distracting times we must 
keep in constant personal touch with our people or we 
will lose them. Church work in these days demands that 
our congregations be organized for constant, systematic, 
personal work with their men, their women, their young 
people, and their children. 

Imperative as the need is for personal work among the 
membership of the church, there is still more need of it 
in the community outside of the church. There are many 
people in our respective communities who might become 
interested in the church if the right persons would make it 
their business to solicit their interest. But we have not 
been soliciting men on the street and in the shop as Jesus 
and the Apostles did, and as the foreign missionaries do, 
and as the modern salesman does. What might we not 
expect if the good men, the clean and the influential men 
of our congregations, would make it their business to 
interest their friends and neighbors in the church ! But 
we have not been doing this. We Christians have not 
been good salesmen for Christ. We have the goods, but 
we have not made an adequate effort to get the people 
interested in it. 

ISTot only should the individual congregations be organ- 
ized for personal work among the unchurched in their 
respective parishes, but the congregations of all the 
denominations of the town or city should be federated 
for thorough personal work among the unchurched and 
the indifferent. If the congregations of the community 
would unite in the plan suggested by the Federal Council's 
Commission on Evangelism; and if these cooperative 
efforts would be backed up by the humane ministry of the 
kingdom, many people would be won for God and the 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 155 

clmrcli whom the Spirit will never move to come of their 
own accord. 

But there are many people in every large community 
whom no amount of advertising, and no amount of per- 
sonal solicitation, will induce to come to our churches and 
Sunday schools. But shall we leave them to their choice, 
while we continue to conduct services for those who care 
to come? Can we feel that we are fulfilling our evange- 
listic obligations in this way ? If the church really feels 
that she has a message for these people she must not hesi- 
tate to carry it after them as Jesus and the Apostles did. 
There are ways of getting our message to these people in 
the community who will not come to our churches. The 
public press has come to be the most potent factor in 
moulding public sentiment on all questions, and the 
church must not hesitate to use its pages to convey the 
message which the pulpit can no longer convey. A single 
issue of the public press reaches more people than all the 
preachers and Sunday school teachers of the community are 
able to reach in a week, perhaps in a month. The church 
must not fail to avail herself of this means to inject the 
ideals of the kingdom of God into public feeling and 
opinion. Weekly and monthly magazines have become 
very potent factors in the moulding of public sentiment. 
Here is another opportunity that is open to the church to 
address herself to an element of people who cannot be 
reached from the pulpit and the Sunday school rostrum. 
However, to steer clear of the common prejudice against 
preaching, these newspaper and magazine messages should 
be as different as possible, both in form and spirit, from 
the stereotyped sermons that we hear in the church. The 
essential thing is not that the message contains the con- 
ventional text, or that it is an exposition of a portion of 
Scripture, but that it conveys the spirit and the ideals of 
the kingdom of God in clear, forceful language. The 
small pamphlet or tract, which can be published with little 
expense and placed in every home of a city or town, fur- 



156 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

nishes another evangelistic opportunity of which the 
church should avail herself.! When Victor Berger, the 
socialist leader of Milwaui:ee, was asked why the 
socialists had made such progress in his city, he 
gave this pertinent reply: ^We put nine-tenth of 
our income into literature, and every Sunday morn- 
ing three hundred men are out at five o'clock placing 
pamphlets into all the homes in the city.'' The Christian 
church might well profit hy the practical wisdom of the 
socialists. The people must be enlightened before they 
will become interested. And since only one out of every 
ten or fifteen in the average American community comes 
to church to be enlightened it is clear that we should adopt 
some new methods of enlightening the people. Many 
people who are indifferent to the religion of priests and 
creeds would be interested in the religion of the kingdom 
of God if they were made familiar with it. 

In addition to carrying the Christian message after the 
people through the public press, magazines, and tracts, 
the churches of the community should unite at times in 
holding mass meetings in some public hall or theater to 
which a certain class of people will come, who cannot be 
induced to come to our churches. Such services must of 
necessity be of a quite popular nature or the people whom 
we desire to reach will not come. They will not come to 
be preached at. The People's Sunday Evening Meetings 
which were held in the city of Rochester, 'New York, for 
a number of seasons, serve as an example of what should 
be done in all large communities. These meetings were 
held in a down-town theater for fifteen or twenty Sunday 
evenings during the winter. Three Christian ministers, 
Professor Rauschenbusch, Dr.. Strayer, and Dr. Thomas, 
assisted by a committee of fifteen others made up of prom- 
inent Christian business men, professional men, and 
trades unionists, arranged the meetings. Religious, so- 
cial, and purely civic and economic questions were dis- 
cussed. After the question had been presented from the 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 157 

platform, an opportunity was given for a free discussion 
from the floor. All the stiffness and the formality, which 
make the ordinary church service unpopular with a cer- 
tain class of people, were thus eliminated. The results, 
as I was informed by one of the participating clergymen, 
were gTatifying. The meetings afforded a splendid op- 
portunity for the application of religious principles to 
civic and economic affairs. They gave an opportunity to 
inject the ideals of Jesus into certain aspects of the com- 
munity's life in a way that is not possible from the pulpit. 
And the fact that these clergymen and prominent Chris- 
tian business men met the people of all classes on their 
own level, discussed their problems, answered their ques- 
tions, and met their objections in a frank, fair, and cour- 
teous way, broke down much of the prejudice against the 
church which had existed in the minds of these people. 
Meetings of a similar character have been held in a num- 
ber of other communities. In each case, so far as I have 
been able to discover, the results were gratifying. 

While such meetings may not — very likely will not — 
result in the immediate recruiting of many individuals 
for the church, they nevertheless will help to make the 
church and a part of her message and program known 
to a certain class of people whom we cannot reach in any 
other way. And any method that gets our message to 
the people is good evangelism. It is not necessary that 
we should always be thinking of the number of people we 
may add to the church by our evangelistic efforts. We 
may perhaps have done that too much in the past. The 
hedonistic philosophers taught that the best way to make 
sure of our own happiness is not to keep thinking about 
it, or directly aiming at it, but rather to work for the hap- 
piness of others. And it may be that the surest way of 
adding people to the church is not to think of making con- 
verts, but rather of the good that we may do to the people. 

And, finally, our churches should be organized to carry 
not only the Gospel message down to the last one of the 



158 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

many unchurclied, but also to carry the kingdom-ministry 
of mercifulness and of helpfulness down to the last help- 
less man, woman, and child in the community. The 
churches of the community should be prepared, through 
social workers, parish nurses, deaconesses, etc., to carry 
the English language, our American ideals of living, med- 
icine, soap and water, and every form of human help- 
fulness and encouragement into the many homeless homes 
from which the sunshine of the kingdom of God has been 
barred by ignorance, helplessness, and sin. Our personal 
evangelistic efforts can be powerfully reinforced if, as in 
the case of the evangelistic labors of Jesus, they will be 
supplemented by the humane ministry of helpfulness 
which the kingdom of God implies. 

Closing up the Leaks. — 'No matter how eifective our 
preaching may be, or how thorough our work with in- 
dividuals may be, much of our labor will go to waste so 
long as we remain as indifferent as we were in the past, 
to the environment of the people. A large class of people, 
as was stated in the preceding section, are not reached by 
the church because they are born and reared under con- 
ditions which make it exceedingly difficult for them to be 
appealed to by the high ideals of the Christian life. The 
church today finds herself unable to unbar the doors which 
her indifference to the social order helped to close many 
years ago. And if we do reach some of these people for a 
time it is only to lose them again. The alluring influence 
of their unregenerated environment is too strong for their 
stunted wills to master. The only way to evangelize the 
people of the slums and to keep them evangelized is to 
abolish the slums. There is no other way. That may 
mean striking deep into the present social order, — into 
the matter of housing and renting, and into our whole 
profit-worshipping system of industry. But it must be 
done if we are serious in our talk about saving the people. 
The old type of individualistic evangelism, plucking in- 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 159 

dividual brands from the fire, without extinguishing the 
fire, is not a rational treatment of the problem. 

Even in our better communities, and among the better 
class of people, much of our work with individuals goes 
to waste because of the many evil conditions that still ex- 
ist. We have been attempting to save individuals by ga- 
thering them into the church and the Sunday school, and 
there insulating them against the evil in the world, only 
to find, through sad experience, that many of them are 
very poorly insulated. ISTot only have we failed to re- 
cruit the major portion of our population, but we are con- 
stantly losing an alarming number of those whom we had 
won. The number of names erased from our church 
records from year to year is amazing. Fully 20% of the 
catechumens — children from our own church families and 
who are specially taught in the things of Christ — are lost 
to the church within ten years after confirmation. About 
40 % of all the children enrolled in our Sunday Schools are 
lost to us before they become twenty years of age. In 
the case of many of these delinquents the fault, so far as 
it can be determined, is chiefiy their own. The finer things 
of the Christian life have proved no attraction for them. 
"They prefer the tents of wickedness to the house of the 
Lord." But in many cases the fault is as much that of the 
environment as their own. They were encouraged to 
place their names on the church roll, and then were com- 
pelled to live in homes that did not encourage them and 
help them ; and they were obliged to work and seek their 
recreation in a community that tolerates many evil con- 
ditions which have proved their undoing. 

The average Christian community is full of moral sink- 
holes which we have not tried to close up, and in which 
many of our people are lost. In the average American 
community, during the last half century, the licensed 
liquor places have outnumbered the churches and the Sun- 
day schools. Club houses have existed in which intoxi- 
cating liquors have been furnished indiscriminately to 



160 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

men and women, to adults and minors, at all hours of the 
day and night, and for seven days of the week. In ad- 
dition to these moral cesspools, the average Christian 
community has its houses of prostitution, its places of vul- 
gar amusements conducted solely for profit, and many 
other evils which lure the average man and woman away 
from the church, and from the things that are clean and 
holy, with more power than we have at command to draw 
them. Gathering the children into the Sunday school 
and into the catechetical class for an hour a week, and 
then sending them back into a community much of whose 
life we have complacently left to the devil, will never 
solve our problems. Hard-worked and poorly nourished 
as many of them are; compelled by an evil housing sys- 
tem to live in houses that are unfit for human beings to 
live in; their moral and their aesthetic sense stunted by 
their birth and their environment, — ^how can we expect 
anything but the speedy loss of a great many of them ! 
And I fear that some of our distinguished city ofiicials, 
some of our profit-fattened landlords who are esteemed 
members of our churches, and some of us morally short- 
sighted and socially indifferent Christians, will fare worse 
before the judgment bar of a just God than these victims 
of an evil environment. 

The great majority of erasures from our list of mem- 
bership, so far as I have been able to discover, are for non- 
payment of dues. Here is our greatest leakage. In the 
majority of these cases there is, no doubt, a moral reason 
back of the financial delinquency. Most of these people 
could pay their church dues if they cared to do so. But, 
on the other hand, there are many good and honest people 
who will not join the church, and others who have left 
the church, because they need every cent of their meager 
income for the daily necessities of life. Reliable inves- 
tigations of the distribution of income have surprised us 
with the revelation that fully one-fourth of all the families 
of the United States, during the decade or two before the 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 161 

war, were living on less than $600 a year. Every large 
community in rich America has many families — good, 
honest families — who cannot afford to pay the dues and 
the extra benevolence which the church requires of her 
members without denying themselves some of the vital 
necessities. And I refuse to cast the first stone 
at the man who uses the tithe of a .^600 or a <^700 income 
to buy an extra bottle of milk for his babies, or a new hat 
for his wife, rather than give it to the church. The crea- 
tion of a really Christian public sentiment in favor of 
steady employment and an efficient-living income for all 
honest citizens would be a more legitimate and effective 
piece of evangelism than the calling of a professional 
evangelist, or the holding of prayer-meetings to pray for 
the coming of the kingdom. The living wage should at 
least make it possible for some good people to remain in 
the church who otherwise are unable to do so; and it 
would make it possible for many others who remain in 
the church to do their full share as members. 

In a word then: The three essential things which the 
evangelistic programme of the kingdom implies are a 
message and a ministry that answer the needs of our mod- 
ern life; adequate ways and means of getting our mes- 
sage and ministry into vital touch with the people; and 
the redemption of the community as a means of recruit- 
ing individuals and of holding them after we have re- 
cruited them. 

IV 

IS THE. PROGRAM OF EVANGECLISM IMPLIED IN" THE SO- 
CIAL COO^CEPTION OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD POSSIBLE 
UK^DER PRESEN^T CONDITIONS IN PROTESTANTISM f 

The program which the social conception of the 
kingdom of God implies, and which our age demands, 
puts a tremendous strain upon the churches of the aver- 
age Protestant community. There is need, as we have 



162 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

seen, of a vital message from the pulpit — a message that 
interprets God to individuals and to the age in clear, 
forceful language. In no other age was preaching put 
to so severe a test as in our own day. If preaching is to 
be saved as a vital factor in the moulding of public sen- 
timent it must be saved from the mediocrity into which it 
is rapidly being degraded. Only the best preaching will 
be able to get and to hold the ear of our age. And there 
is need also of congregational and inter-congregational 
organization and machinery that will carry our message 
and our ministry to the last man in the congregation and 
to the last man in the community. The religion of the 
kingdom of God implies all of this, and our practical 
age demands it. 

But the average Protestant congregation finds itself 
unable to carry out this big program. The number 
of congregations that are prepared to carry out the social 
service program as suggested by the Federal Council's 
Commission on Social Service is exceedingly small. The 
average Protestant congregatJion, with its shorta^ge of 
trained leadership, is unable to carry out the program 
suggested by our denominational commissions on evan- 
gelism and social service. It is not possible for the aver- 
age Eeformed congregation to run the machinery rec- 
ommended in our denominational handbook on: "Local 
Church Efficiency." Under the divided conditions of our 
Protestant communities, with our many small and poor 
congregations where the pastor, the janitor, and the or- 
ganist are the only paid workers, the vital preaching and 
the practical ministry which the religion of the kingdom 
implies are not possible. In the average Protestant com- 
munity, at the present time, the practical end of the 
church program cannot be carried out without in- 
fringing upon the more fundamental task of teaching 
and preaching. 

We must be on our guard against a very subtle danger 
at this point. In those congregations where the preacher 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 163 

is the only specially trained and paid worker, especially 
where the congregation has a large constituency, so many 
demands of a practical nature are being made upon the 
minister's limited time and energy that preaching is fast 
becoming a neglected art. Too much is demanded of the 
preacher, who must serve as general manager of every 
thing that is undertaken by the congregation. He is ex- 
pected to be an able preacher, an efficient religious educa- 
tor, an expert financier, a good organizer, and a ready 
mixer with all classes of people, — a task for which no 
mere human being can qualify. The pastor may try to 
divide his time equally between these equally pressing 
tasks with the result that he will wear himself out while 
nothing is done well. Or he may divide his time and 
energy according to the pressure that is put upon him 
from the outside which, in most cases, will result in his 
becoming a benevolent tax collector and a man of affairs, 
while preaching will become a mere side issue. 

Vital preaching and practical community service are 
both necessary. To sacrifice either the one or the other 
is to surrender a part of the service which the kingdom of 
God has entrusted to us. One of the specific tasks of the 
church is to think out ways and means of strengthening 
both the vital preaching and the practical ministry that 
is expected of us. 

One way out of the present difficulty is through the re- 
organization of our divided Protestant church. ISTot only 
has Protestantism been divided into a multitude of com- 
peting denominations and sects, but the denominations 
themselves have been subdivided into too many small and 
socially inefficient congregations.' We are beginning to 
recognize the folly of establishing small, competing cong- 
regations on every third or fourth street corner of our 
cities and towns. Whatever there is that we may have 
gained by encouraging many small congregations rather 
than fewer and larger ones, it is clear that we have, in 
this way, sacrificed our social efficiency. The only con- 



164 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

gregations, according to the Inter-Church Surveys, that 
have had momentum enough to keep moving forward dur- 
ing the last quarter of a century are the large ones. 
The small congregations have either stood still or gone 
back unmercifully; and they have slid back still more so 
far as their influence on the community is concerned. 
The small congregation cannot carry out the big pro- 
gram which the social conception of the kingdom im- 
plies, and which the community of which the church is a 
part demands. There is urgent need in almost every 
Protestant community for the consolidation of many of 
our small and socially inefficient congregations. One 
large congregation, with a judiciously planned division of 
labor, and with expert departmental superintendents, can 
render a much more efficient service to its own constitu- 
ency and to its community, than a number of small and 
inadequately equipped congregations can render. 

In the section of the city in which I am serving there 
are three congregations of the Reformed church within a 
radius of four squares of each other. These congrega- 
tions are far above the average Protestant congregation in 
numerical strength. One of them has a membership of 
1500, and the other two of about 1000 each. Two of 
these congregations have paid secretaries who give all of 
their time to the work of the congregation. But these 
two secretaries, who are nothing more than ordinary sten- 
ographers, are the only paid Vv^orkers in addition to the 
pastor, the organist, and the janitor. The result is three 
socially inefficient congregations. There is no division 
of labor, because there is no specially trained and paid 
leadership. In each case the pastor must be preacher, 
religious educator, financier, organizer and director of 
men's work, of women's work, and of young people's 
work, — a task too great for any man. In addition to 
these outstanding congregational tasks, there are other 
duties which no man can number, and which the pastor 
dare not neglect. There is no one man who can do all 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 165 

these things^ and do tliem well. All things must be 
poorly done, or else some things must be left undone. 
And too frequently it is the preparation for effective 
preaching that is left undone. JSTo man can attend to 
the multitudinous affairs that demand attention under 
conditions like these and preach two sermons each Sun- 
day that are worth coming to hear. 

If these three inadequately equipped and poorly organ- 
ized congTCgations were united in one big congregation, 
with a carefully planned division of labor under trained 
leadership, a much more efficient service could be ren- 
dered to its own constituency and to the community at 
large than is now being rendered by the three institutions. 
And it could be done for less money than is now spent in 
running the three competitive institutions. 

The big congregation could, first of all, afford a church 
plant designed and equipped to render real service. In 
addition to the church auditorium, there could be a Sun- 
day school building in which it would be possible to con- 
duct a school of religious education, something that very 
few congregations have at the present time. And it 
would be possible to have a real community house with a 
real library, a gymnasium, a banquet hall, social rooms, 
etc., such as the full religious culture of our people. de- 
mands. Through the division of labor one man could be 
left as free as possible to preach. ISTot only could the 
preacher be as free as possible from mentally distracting 
detail work, which the constant preparation for effective 
preaching demands, but he would be inspired to do his 
best by the assurance of a worth-while audience to whom 
to preach. The small congregation not only makes con- 
structive community work impossible, but it also dis- 
courages preaching. The best preacher in the country 
would deteriorate into mediocrity within ten years if he 
were obliged to preach to twenty-five or fifty people from 
Sunday to Sunday and with no hope of a better audience. 
In addition to the preacher, there could be a specially 



166 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

trained and paid religious educator, who would give all 
his time to this important department of the work. Such 
a congregation could also afford the services of an ex- 
pert financier, who would be made responsible for this 
ever-increasingly burdensome department of church work. 
And, on what is now wasted in running the three com- 
petitive churches, the service of an expert in young 
people's work, and of some one who is qualified to bring 
the church into vital touch with the aliens in the commun- 
ity, could be secured. One such big and efficient congre- 
gation could impress itself upon the community in a way 
that is not possible for a number of small and weak cong- 
regations to do.^ 

In many of our smaller communities there are two or 
three small, half-starved, poorly equipped congregations 
of the same denomination, and only a fifteen or twenty 
minute's walk apart. N^ot only the need of social effi- 
ciency, but plain business sense demands their consoli 
dation into one congregation which could then prepare 
itself to render some real service. In the majority of 
towns and boroughs, especially here in the East, there are 
half a dozen or more small, pitifully poor and hopelessly 
incompetent congregations of different denominations 
whose energy is all spent in just keeping alive. The big 
service which the kingdom of God implies cannot be ren- 
dered by the churches of such a community. I spent a 
brief vacation, some time ago, in a delightful town of 
about 3500 inhabitants in which there are ten Protest- 
ant churches. The average size of these congregations 
is about 150, and the average attendance about 65, The 
combined salaries of the ten clergymen amount to about 

^ In Allentown, a city of 80,000 people, there are ten congrega- 
tions of the Reformed Church in the United States, with a com- 
bined membership of about 7,000. Three congregations, con- 
veniently located, more especially since our city is very com- 
pactly built, could serve our own people and the city better than 
the ten congregations can. 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 167 

$15,000, and tlie total running expenses of the ten congre- 
gations to about $25,000. It would be amusing to think 
of the efficiency of these ten congregations if the thing 
were not so tragic. It is a crime to continue wasting our 
energy in this way. The churches of such a community 
cannot render the service which the kingdom of God en- 
trusts to them. One religious organization, with the 
kind of plant and the judiciously planned division of 
labor indicated above, could render a much more ac- 
ceptable service to its own members and to the town than 
is possible for the ten independent congregations to ren- 
der. And it could be done with less money than is now 
spent in running the ten competitive institutions. Some 
such reconstruction must take place in our divided Pro- 
testant communities if the vital preaching and the prac- 
tical ministry which the kingdom of God implies shall 
be made possible. 

It is clear, furthermore, that the carrying out of the big 
program of the kingdom of God requires the training 
of a new type of church worker. The full kingdom pro- 
gram cannot be carried out by the preacher and a corps 
of willing workers. In the average congregation, no 
matter how strong it may be numerically, the people can- 
not be found who have the necessary qualifications of 
ability, consecration, willingness, and leisure to do the 
work that must be done. It can be done only through the 
leadership of specially trained men and women, who are 
paid for their services. The need is growing daily for 
specially trained religious educators, who will be able to 
introduce into our Bible schools the scientific methods of 
instruction that are employed in our public schools. 
There is also a growing demand for specially trained 
church financiers, for specialists in young people's work, 
and for men and women who are qualified to work with the 
aliens in our cosmopolitan communities. These special- 
ists are just as essential to the success of the enlarged 
church program as are the preachers themselves. In 



168 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

some communities their work may count for more than the 
work of the old-line preacher. 

The training of this new type of church worker im- 
poses a new task upon the educational institutions of the 
church. Special schools should be established, or special 
departments should be added to our denominational col- 
leges or our theological seminaries, in which this new 
type of church v/orker can receive the necessary training. 
Our theological seminaries should do in their particular 
field what our great universities have done in the larger 
field of education. The special merit of our universities 
is their persistent effort to meet the needs which our grow- 
ing, changing age has been placing before them. They 
have been adding special courses and new departments 
as the need for special kinds of training became imper- 
ative. We shall expect from our church institutions at 
least the same willingness, if not the same ability, to 
serve. 

To meet the need which the training for the modern 
ministry implies, may necessitate a radical readjustment 
in the educational department of our denominational life. 
It may require the closing-up of a number of small and 
inadequately equipped schools, which are incompetent to 
prepare workers of the quality and of the variety that are 
demanded. There is no legitimate reason why a small 
denomination which is scarcely able to equip and main- 
tain one college and one theological seminary, should 
waste money and energy in maintaining half a dozen or 
more such institutions, all of which will, of dire necessity, 
be so poorly equipped in men and in material resources as 
to render them wholly incompetent to meet the demands 
which our exacting age is making upon us. One large, 
well equipped educational institution can render a more 
acceptable service to two or three thousand students than 
half a dozen small, inadequately equipped institutions 
can render to the same number of students. The new 
age will be an age of big, cooperating institutions in the 



The Church and the Extensive Growth of the Kingdom 169 

interest of service and efficiency; and this spirit must 
invade our church life or we will fail in the big things 
that are expected of us. 

We hope that some day our zeal for the kingdom of 
God will overcome our sectarian prejudice and our relig- 
ious narrowness. In that day there will he fewer congre- 
gations, but larger and better ones; and there will be 
fewer denominational institutions of learning, but larger 
and more efficient ones. Until that time comes much of 
what is implied in the program of the kingdom must 
be left undone. 



THE CHUECH AND THE IE'TE:N'SIVE GROWTH 

OF THE KINGDOM OR THE PROBLEMS OF 

CHRISTIANIZATION 



CHAPTER FOUR 

the; chuech and the; intensive; growth of the 
kingdom, or the problems of christianization 

THE kingdom of God is rooted in evangelization 
and comes to fruitage in christianization. The 
purpose of evangelization is to win formal ac- 
ceptance of tlie principles of the kingdom, while the pur- 
pose of christianization is to make these principles func- 
tion in our individual and our social life. In this chap- 
ter I shall speak of the christianizing of the individual, 
the community, the nation, and that basic department of 
our life, industry. 



CHRISTIANIZING THE INDIVIDUAL 

Our first task is with the individual; but that task is 
not finished when we have made him a member of the 
church. Our work with the individual is not finished 
until we have inspired him to govern his life in all its 
relationships in conformity with the ideals and the mo- 
tives of the kingdom of God. Our work with the in- 
dividual is not finished until we have made him both 
willing and able to participate in such a society as the 
kingdom of God implies. 

And what, so far as we can determine it, has the church 
accomplished in the way of giving men capacity to live 
the kingdom-life? What has she made of the men and 
the women whom she has recruited? In what vital re- 
spects are the people in the church different from the 

173 



174 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

people outside of the diurch? How mucli better are 
they, and how much better is the community in which 
they live, because of their membership in the church? 
Can the church view the results of her efforts at christ- 
ianization with a fair degree of satisfaction? Can she, 
with a fair degree of truth, say with her Lord : ^'Father, 
the work Thou gavest me to do have I done?'' 

The ChurcJis work not to he despised. — The church's 
work has by no means been fruitless. Her membership 
compares very favorably with any other group of people 
to be found anywhere. One need not hesitate to say that 
the 42,000,000 Christians in the United States are, on the 
whole, the best people in the United States ; and that the 
several hundred million Christians throughout the world 
are, on the whole, the best people in the world. If we 
could compare the best people in the church with the 
best outside, and the worst people in the church with the 
worst outside, the balance would unquestionably be in 
favor of the church people. The influence of Jesus 
Christ has been the greatest moral force in the world for 
two thousand years ; and his influence has been able to 
exert itself more effectively in the church than outside of 
it. There is no question that it is better to be a member 
of the church than not to be one. 'No one who has a fair 
knowledge of men and of history would care to deny that 
the church has developed a type of individual character 
that compares very favorably with the best that is to be 
found anywhere. 

The Church's work not above criticism. — While it can- 
not be disputed that the members of the Christian church 
compare very favorably, man for man, with any non- 
church group, nevertheless our efforts at christianization 
have not been above criticism. There are certain critics 
whose judgment may not be disregarded as incompetent 
or stigmatized as blasphemous, who contend that there is 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 175 

something associated with our methods of church work 
that has a tendency to produce a double standard of mor- 
ality in our members. That means that there is some- 
thing connected with our methods of making Christians 
that tends to develop a Pharasaic piety that makes a good 
showing when on parade, but not necessarily so when off 
parade. This is the criticism of Henrik Ibsen, the great 
Norwegian dramatist, and of Blasco Ibanez, the popular 
Spanish novelist, both of whom have wielded great in- 
fluence in certain circles in Europe and America. Ibsen 
especially has been severe on the church on this point. 
He charges her with having produced a type of men who 
are better on Sundays than they are the rest of the week ; 
men who are good in the light, but not necessarily so in 
the dark; men who are good at home where the people 
know them, but not necessarily so away from home where 
they are not known. ^ 

Of a more serious nature is the charge that we are pro- 
ducing good church people, who are not good Christians, 
i. e., people who are devoted to the church, but who do 
not live the life of the kingdom of God. Mr. Winston 
Churchill, in ^'The Inside of the Cup,'' gives a graphic 
portrait of Eldon Parr and his associates, who are zeal- 
ously devoted to the church, but who are callously indif- 
ferent to the needs of their neighbors. Mr. Parr is the 
champion of orthodoxy. He comes to church regTilarly 
in his elegant motor car, and occupies a front pew. He 
contributes liberally to missions and to every other be- 
nevolent cause of the church. But he has made his wealth 
by violating the principles of the kingdom of God. He 
is directly responsible for bad housing conditions which 
have helped to breed tuberculosis among the poor of the 
city. He is responsible for living conditions that have 
driven young girls into prostitution, one of whom was 
formerly the sweetheart of his own son. The hardness of 
his unregenerated heart ruined his own family. I^ever- 

1 See, Pillars of Society. 



176 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

theless he is a most devoted church man, the arch-cham- 
pion of orthodoxy, and one of a clique of wealthy re- 
actionaries who tie the hands of their progressive pastor 
and domineer the whole congregation. The undisguised 
insinuation of Mr. Churchill is (and his feeling is 
shared by many others) that it is no uncommon thing to 
find men of the Eldon Parr type in our churches, — ^men 
who are devoted to the church, but not to the cause of 
righteousness. 

Others charge the church with developing a type of 
men who are good in their private life, but bad in their 
public life, — men who are true to their wives, kind to 
their children, and good to their neighbors, — men who 
would do no wrong as individuals, but whose stock com- 
panies and trusts which represent their interests are 
guilty of great wrong. This is the criticism of staunch 
friends of the church and men of eminent authority like 
Eauschenbusch, Yedder, Mathews, and many others. 
The best thing that I have ever read from the pen of 
^^Billy" Sunday is the following criticism of this type of 
church people. "We have produced here in America a 
type of men who are religious in the best sense of the 
term in their private lives, but who in their professional, 
commercial, and industrial relations, where other people 
are concerned, do not seem to think that their religion 
need necessarily enter. In other words, this idea of 
religion has produced men whose private lives are good, 
but whose public lives are rotten, vile, bad. While they 
are true to their marriage vows and virtuous, they are 
rotten in politics. We have produced men, who, while 
they would not shoot a man with a pistol, will sit in 
IsTew York or in Philadelphia and by a vote in the Board 
of Directors' meeting set in motion forces that will take 
lives out on the Pacific coast months afterward. While 
they would not hand you a dose of poison, they will sell 
adulterated goods that will kill people a thousand miles 
away. If your religion will not make you sell straight 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 177 

goodsj then it does not amount to ! ! ! in the pews either. 
Men who would not pick the pockets of one man with 
the fingers of their hands will, without hesitation, pick 
the pockets of 100,000,000 people with the fingers of 
their monopoly or commercial advantage. Men who will 
gladly draw their check for $10,000 and give it to a child- 
ren's hospital, see nothing inconsistent in the fact that the 
$10,000 for the children's hospital came out of $200,000 
made from a system of child labor that maims and crushes 
and kills more children in one year that the hospital can 
heal in twenty years." ^ 

Still others charge us with turning out many individ- 
uals against whom no positive evil can he charged either 
in their private life or their public life, but who take no 
interest in establishing the kingdom of God on earth. 
Their goodness is of the pale, negative type; and they 
are, for this reason, mere ciphers in the stern battle for a 
better world. They would form no monopoly to enrich 
themselves at the expense of their fellow men. They 
will sell you no adulterated goods, l^either will they 
put forth any constructive efforts to build a social order 
that will prevent others from doing these evil things. 
They are good people, but they do not represent the rug- 
ged type of goodness that is required in an age of social 
rebuilding. They are Christians, but they lack an 
essential element of the full-fledged kingdom-Chris- 
tian. 

And, finally, and most damaging of all, is the charge 
that the church, as an institution, has either been a cipher 
or an obstacle in social progress. This charge is brought 
not only by social radicals^ but also by friends of the 
church. Here is the opinion which an influential Christ- 
ian magistrate in one of the largest cities of Great Britain 
gave when questioned recently on a certain matter by a 
delegation of British church men. "The church," he 

^ From a sermon preached in Philadelphia and reported by 
the North America/n. 



178 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

said, '^lias opposed every movement toward freedom that 
has been initiated, whether it be the freedom of the per- 
son — for example the abolition of slavery, restriction of 
punishment, cancellation of employer's power; or of the 
mind — for example education; or of the spirit — for ex- 
ample science, self-government. To this day we who 
serve in public authorities, know that the church must 
be accounted hostile, or of doubtful neutrality, in any 
movement that we start. Generations have seen the 
church antagonistic or indifferent, and now they say, 
^never heed the church; it is of no importance.' In this 
great city, in all its important movements, the opinion 
of organized churches, ministers, sessions, and all the rest 
of it, count for absolutely nothing. The Town Council 
has — members; yet, when a church deputation comes, 
there is not one man who cares the snap of the fingers for 
its opinion. It is all a great pity and a great mistake, 
but it is true. And it is the church's own fault. It won't 
take a risk for a principle." ^ 

We are well aware that some of this criticism is col- 
ored by the ignorance or the prejudice of the critic. 
There is a tendency on the part of many of the church's 
critics to draw general conclusions from a limited ex- 
perience and observation. Becau^se the man of the gutter 
has found a few church people who are as vile as he is, he 
is not thereby warranted to conclude that nobody in the 
church is better than he is. Or because Mr. Isben found 
a few^ prominent church people^ in his rather limited ac- 
quaintance, whose piety was divorced from their morality, 
he is not justified in holding up all church people before 
the world as being guilty of living double livesi. Or be- 
cause a good Christian and a man of sound judgment has 
found the established church of England to be an obstruc- 
tion in the way of social progress and a nonenity in 

^ See : "Can the Church and Industry Unite," by David Car- 
nagie, M. P., p. 78. 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 179 

British public opinion, lie must not infer that the same 
is true of the church in all other countries. 

N'evertheless there is something about this criticism 
that sounds so much like that which the prophets and elesus 
pronounced upon the church and its membership in their 
day that it will be well for us to take it seriously. If 
there is any tendency in our methods of church work to 
turn out people upon whose life we have made no impres- 
sion at all; and men who are devoted to the church, but 
not to the cause of humanity; and men who are good in 
their private life, but bad in their public life; and gTeat 
numbers of individuals who are not guilty of any positive 
wrong doing, but who are not interested in winning the 
present social order for God, it is well that we should 
subject our whole religious system to an honest and 
thoroughgoing criticism. It is not impossible that there 
may be something wrong with our formal system of relig- 
ion — with our method of making Christians. In the in- 
terest of truth and righteousness we must not hesitate to 
enter even the Holy of Holies, and to analyze and to expose 
the shortcomings of things that we have long held to be 
too sacred to criticise. 

The Shortcomings of Priestly Religion. — It is a mat- 
ter that challenges serious reflection that both the prophets 
and Jesus blamed the system of the priests more than they 
blamed the individuals under the system for the general 
lack of robust character in the church of their day. The 
root of the trouble was that ritualism and ceremonialism 
had usurped the function of true religion. The model 
religious man was the one who scrupulously observed al] 
the ceremonial and ritualistic requirements of the church. 
He burned up, as a sacrifice to his God, the animals which 
he had laboriously raised, and felt that this was all that 
God required of him. There was no vital relation be- 
tween a man's religion and his dealings with his neigh- 
bors. 



180 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

Against this perversion of the true religion the pro- 
phets spoke with great fervor and frankness. Hosea, in 
his efforts to interpret the will of Jehovah, said; ^^I de- 
sire mercy and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of 
God more than burnt offerings.'' ^ Isaiah said : ^ 'Bring 
no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto 
me ; new moon and Sabbath, the calling of Assemblies, — I 
cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting. 
Your new moons and appointed feasts my soul hateth: 
they are a trouble unto me : I am weary to bear them. 
And when you will spread forth your hands, I will hide 
mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers 
I will not hear: Your hands are full of blood. Wash 
you, make you clean: put away the evil of your doings 
from before mine eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn to do well ; 
seek judgment, release the oppressed, judge the fatherless, 
plead for the widow." ^ Micah, a country preacher, who 
preached to a generation that was studiously exact in the 
performance of the religious ceremonies, but painfully de- 
ficient in its sense of justice and mercy, contrasted the 
priestly with the prophetic conception in the following 
magnificent paragraph: "Wherewith shall I come be- 
fore the Lord, and bow myself down before the high God ? 
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves 
of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thou- 
sands of rams, or tens of thousands of rivers of^oil? 
Shall I give my first born for my transgression : the fruit 
of my body for the sin of my soul ? The Lord hath 
showed thee, O man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord 
require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk 
humbly before thy God.^ 

The church in those days did not produce the type of 
character that the prophets felt they had a right to ex- 
pect, and they blamfed the system of the priests, which di- 

2 1:13-17. 

3 6:6-8 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 181 

verted ttie religious instincts of tlie people from conduct 
to ceremonies. The practice of the church was a hind- 
rance rather than a help to the cause of righteousness. 
We must not be surprised therefore that some of the more 
radical social prophets tried to destroy the very founda- 
tion upon which the sacrificial system rested. Both 
Amos and Jeremiah denied that God had ever commanded 
sacrifices and ceremonies at all. "I hate, I despise your 
feasts, and I will take no delight in your solemn assem- 
blies.^ * *Did you bring unto me sacrifices and offerings 
in the wilderness forty years, house of Israel ?" ^ Jere- 
miah says: ^'I spake not unto your fathers, nor com- 
manded them in the day that I brought them out of the 
land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices: 
but this thing I commanded them, saying, hearken unto 
my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my 
people." 2 

George Adam Smith, in his commentary on Amos, 
says: "The cult of the national God, at the national 
sanctuaries, in the national interest, and by the whole 
body of people, who practiced it with a zeal unparalleled 
by their forefathers, — this is what Amos condemns. 
And he does so absolutely. He has nothing but scorn 
for the temples and the feasts. The assiduity of attend- 
ance, the liberality of gifts, the employment of wealth and 
art and patriotism in worship — he tells his generation 
that God hates it all. Like Jeremiah he even seems to 
imply that God never instituted in Israel any sacrifices 
or offerings." ^ 

The prophets conceived of religion in terms of charac- 
ter, not in terms of ritualism or ceremonialism. What 
God had commanded was obedience to his righteous will 
which, according to the prophets, implied justice and 
mercy to one's fellow men, and humble mindedness be- 

1 Amos, 5 : 21-25. 

2 7 . 22-24. 

3 Amos, "the Expositors Bible," p. 156. 



182 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

fore one's God. These ends were defeated rather than 
fostered by the priestly system. And the social-minded 
prophets showed no respect for a system of religion that 
was not securing the ends and purposes of Jehovah. 
They showed no mercy for the church of their day, which 
was developing a type of individual piety that was di- 
vorced from social morality. 

But the mechanical system of the priests outlived the 
ethical passion of the prophets. After the exile there 
was a reaction in favor of the priest and his mechanical 
system. The national calamity was traced to the people's 
irreligion. But irreligion was interpreted as a lack of 
loyalty to the priestly laws and regulations rather than 
deficiency in the practice of justice and mercy. More 
than ever before were the people's religious instincts di- 
verted from life to ceremony. This de-ethicizing process 
in Israel' religion had come to its zenith some time before 
Jesus was born. The truly religious man, or the man 
who was in special favor with God, was the one who 
obeyed the letter of the law, and was true to all the tra- 
ditions of the elders. He fasted twice in the week, and 
gave the church a tenth of all his possessions down to the 
worthless mints that grew of themselves in his back yard. 
And the unfortunate part of it was that this mechanical 
performance exhausted the requirements of religion. 
When this lip and hand service was faithfully performed 
nothing further was required. Religion was completely 
divorced from life. 

The post-Exilic priestly system developed some very 
pious souls, and some really virile characters ; but on the 
whole it failed just as it did in the days of the prophets. 
Jesus condemned the religious system of his day as ve- 
hemently as the prophets did in their day. He pro- 
nounced judgment upon the system of the priests and the 
Pharisees because it had developed more hypocrites than 
men of substantial character. They cleansed the outside 
of the platter, but within, where the seat of character is, 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 183 

they were full of extortion and excess. They white- 
washed the outside of the sepulchre, but within they were 
full of dead men's bones — the bones of men they had de- 
voured in their public life. On the Sabbath and in public 
places they offered long prayers, and on week days and in 
secret they devoured the widow^'s house and robbed the 
orphan. A tenth of what they had thus taken from their 
defenceless brethern they pretended to give to God by sanc- 
tifying it on the altar. They compassed sea and land in 
their zeal to make proselytes, and then made them worse 
than they were while they were Gentiles. 

1^0 more merciless criticism of priestly religion was 
ever uttered than this. But Jesus knew what he was 
doing. The religion of the priests and the Phariesees 
failed to produce the type of character that Jesus was 
looking for. It failed to develop men who dealt justly 
wdth their fellow men, and who were merciful to the 
weak and the helpless, and who walked humbly before 
their God. It developed a type of men who were faith- 
ful to the church, but not to the cause of righteousness. 
In the interest of the kingdom of God Jesus denounced 
the system of the priests because it was largely to blame 
for the perversion of religion from which the age was 
suffering. The priests taught that the man who gave his 
money to the Temple, which supported their system, was 
exempt from the most sacred social duty, — that of caring 
for his indigent parents. The money that was placed 
upon the altar was declared to have the blood of the widow 
and the orphan, from whom it was taken, washed off. 
Under the theology of the priests and the Pharisees the 
church had (degenerated into a social parasite whiich 
drained the life of the community without giving back an 
equivalent in service. Jesus pronounced judgment upon 
the church of his day because it had become a hindrance 
rather than a help to the cause of the kingdom of God. 

But once more, in the long course of history, the pro- 
gram of the priest gained the victory over the passion 



184 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

of the prophet. During the Middle Ages the ethical 
religion of Jesus went to seed in the priestly system of 
the Catholic church. Eeligion was interpreted in terms 
of churchliness rather than in terms of life. The saint 
was the man who obeyed all the external regulations of 
the church, rather than the man who loved his neighbor 
as himself. Men were made saintly by a magical rather 
than by a vital process. Through baptism, through con- 
firmation by the laying on of hands by a priest who stood 
in the unbroken line of the Apostolic succession, and by 
means of the holy wafer and the consecrated wine which 
were reputed to have become miraculously changed into 
the very flesh and blood of the crucified Savior, the in- 
dividual was declared to become transformed from a sin- 
ner, totally corrupt, into a saint fit for the New Jerusa- 
lem. Through the magic of the sacraments divine grace 
was declared to become miraculously operative in the in- 
dividual church member's soul. The religious life thus 
generated expressed itself in the performance of the re- 
ligious ceremonies of the church, rather than in con- 
structive efforts at building the kingdom of God. Not 
only was the righteousness of Jesus declared to become 
imputed to the members of the church, but even the ex- 
tra merits of good men could be bought in the ecclesias- 
tical market and placed to the credit of morally deficient 
church members. It is difficult to conceive of a more 
thoroughly nauseating thing than such deceitful playing 
with the credulity of ignorant and superstitious people in 
the name of Jesus Christ. 

It would be ungrateful of us not to recognize the 
religious service of the Catholic church during this dark 
period. The monks and the priests preserved the seed- 
corn of the Christian religion from destruction in a 
wicked world. And it would be wrong to infer that the 
Catholic church of this period did not produce some 
splendid characters. Some of the most pious souls of all 
history were developed in the monasteries of the Mediaeval 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 185 

Church. 'Not should we overlook the charitable service 
rendered by some of the organizations of the church of 
that day. The monasteries were communistic associa- 
tions from whose doors no needy persons were ever turned 
away. But the fact remains that the morality of the 
clergy, and of the rank and file of the laity, was at very 
low ebb. The Catholic church of this period failed to 
inspire her members to take their place in the kind of 
society that the kingdom of God implies. On the con- 
trary, Mediaeval religion unfitted men for that world- 
redeeming social life which is the very soul of the religion 
of the prophets and Jesus. On the whole the results of 
the Mediaeval churchly religion were as unsatisfactory, 
from the ethical or social point of view, as were those of 
the Jewish church of fifteen centuries before. It can be 
said with truth that for two thousand years, from the days 
of Amos and Micah to the time of Luther and Zwingle, the 
church hindered the cause of the kingdom of God, or the 
righteous social order, about as much as it helped it. 

The Protestant Reformation was an honest attempt to 
save the Christian religion from the errors and abuses 
of Catholicism. But Protestantism has not saved re- 
ligion altogether from the unethical tendencies of the 
priestly system. Many of the Mediaeval doctrines, which 
are a hindrance rather than a help in the stimulation of 
ethical or social endeavor, are still clinging to our the- 
ology. Many Protestant Christians, perhaps the majority 
of them, still view the church as a l^oah's Ark that shall 
conduct them safely out of this world, rather than as an 
organization for the establishing of a righteous social 
order. I fear that the majority of people still join the 
church that they may be sure of going to heaven when 
they die, rather than that they may be equipped for service 
in the interest of the kingdom of God on earth. So 
long as this is the case membership in the Christian 
church will fail to have the ethically and socially stimula- 
ting effect that it should have. In many quarters of the 



186 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

cliurcli the unethical theories of the atonement are still 
vigorously defended and eloquently preached. The people 
are made to believe that the sacrifice of Jesus on the 
Cross has been accepted by God as payment for their own 
personal guilt; or that his righteousness is magically im- 
puted to them because they have joined the church, sub- 
scribed to her creeds, and partake of her sacraments. 
Many Protestant Christians still believe in the regenera- 
tive magic of baptism and the Lord's Supper. They be- 
lieve that baptism innoculates the child against sin some- 
what as the typhus anti-toxin makes one immune from 
typhoid fever. They believe that the sinner and the half- 
sinner are magically transformed into saints by means of 
the consecrated bread and wine in the Holy Communion, 
We still overemphasize divine grace as operating magic- 
ally through the sacraments, while we slight the idea of 
the divine will as cooperating with the human will for 
ethical and social ends. There are still many of us who 
feel that when we have worshipped God in the church on 
Sunday by repeating creeds and prayers, by singing 
hymns, and by giving an offering for benevolence, we 
have exhausted the requirements of religion. But this 
is precisely the thing that the prophets and Jesus censured 
so severely in their day. This type of religion has failed 
to develop the kind of Christian individual who is a 
vital factor in the establishing of the kingdom of God on 
earth. 

Let no one mistake this as speaking lightly of sacred 
things, or of religious practices that have become hallowed 
by centuries of usage. I speak of these things as I do 
only because of the overmastering conviction that the em- 
phasis we are placing on these external matters is still 
defeating the ends of the religion of the kingdom of God. 
We are still doing what they did in the days of Jesus 
and the prophets. We are still making ends of things 
which, at best, can serve only as means to a higher end. 
As the law was only a school-master to the Gospel, as 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 187 

Saint Paul expressed it, so the ceremonial and individual- 
istic religion of the past should be considered only as a 
school-master to the higher ethical and social type of re- 
ligion that is implied in the doctrine of the kingdom of 
God. I am convinced that the priestly methods which 
were largely responsible, in the days of the prophets and 
Jesus, for the presence in the church of many men who 
were faithful to the religious system, but unjust and un- 
merciful in their dealings with their neighbors, are also, 
in large measure, responsible for whatever there is of 
this same evil in the church today. As a result of the 
theology and the religious customs which we have in 
herited from the past, and which we have not had the 
wisdom and the courage to change, we still have a class 
of people in our churches who are good church people but 
poor Christians. There is still too much in our the- 
ology and in our church life that fails to stimulate the 
moral will of the individual member, and that fails to 
inspire constructive efforts for social regeneration in the 
group of Christians. 

But what else can we do to make people Christian? 
How can we prepare our people to take their place in the 
righteous social order which the kingdom of God bids 
us establish ? 

Making Christians a Vital Rather than a Magical 
Process. — Perhaps the first surprise that one trained in 
the ways of the church gets when he makes a critical study 
of the Gospels is the discovery that the ceremonial and 
the sacramental elements which the church has placed so 
conspicuously in the foreground, are there kept in the 
dim background. It is clear, even to the casual reader, 
that Jesus paid but slight attention to the ritualistic and 
ceremonial practices of the church of his day. It is 
beyond dispute that he did not consider the ceremonial 
requirements of the church as essential to the living of 
the kingdom-lifei. It is a debatable question whefther 



188 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

he considered even baptism and the Lord's Supper as 
special means of grace. 

It is true, according to the Gospel records, that 
Jesus submitted to the baptism of John the Baptist, and 
that his own disciples practiced the rite, at least during 
the earlier part of his ministry. But the Synoptic nar- 
ratives do not warrant the conclusion that Jesus thought 
of water baptism as a means of grace. There is no evi- 
dence that the rite was assigned a place in the religious 
program of the kingdom. It was not a part of the 
vital process by which Jesus tried to make men fit sub- 
jects of the kingdom of God.^ 

It seems probable also, we may say quite certain, that 
Jesus would have had something more to say about the 
Lord's Supper if it had held the important place in his 
mind that it has always held in the mind of the church. 
It is inconceivable that Jesus should never even have al- 
luded to this important rite until the very last evening 
of his life, if he felt that man's salvation was in any way 
dependent upon its proper observance. It is clear from 
the Gospel records that the Lord's Supper had its origin 
in connection with Jesus' last observance of the Jewish 
Feast of the Passover without the slightest previous al- 
lusion to it. If Jesus meant it to become a permanent 

^ The only Scriptural evidence that Jesus assigned water 
baptism a place in his program is Matt. 28: 19. But it is 
a debatable question whether this verse as it stands may be 
attributed to Jesus. The prominence which it gives to an out- 
ward form is out of harmony with the spirit of all the previous 
teachings of Jesus. And, furthermore, there is no trace of the 
Trinitarian formula of baptism throughout the Apostolic Age. 
Every one of the Apostles, so far as the New Testament records 
inform us, baptized in the name of Jesus only, which would be 
inconceivable if there had been any knowledge of a specific 
commiand of the Master to baptize in the name of the Father, 
and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. On this subject see: Wendt, 
"Die Lehre Jesu," II, 610; also Gilbert, "The Revelation of 
Jesus," pp. 127-129; and Allen, "The International Critical 
Commentary on Matthew, pp. 305-308. 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 189 

rite, its origin would indicate that it was to do for his 
followers what the Passover Feast had done for the Jews. 
It was to be a memorial of the deliverance from the 
bondage of the old religious order as the Passover was a 
memorial of the deliverance from the bondage of Egypt. 
As such the Lord's Supper, like the Jewish Passover, has 
both historical and ethical value. As a memorial of the 
one who gave his life in an effort to lead mankind on 
to a higher and nobler life, it is a most sacred ordinance. 
But its value is inspirational and ethical, not magical. 
There is no virtue in its observance if it fails to inspire 
in us the same sacrificial spirit that was in Jesus. The 
direction to eat his flesh and drink his blood in the 
Capernaum speech the day after the feeding of the 5000, 
and which has no reference at all to the memorial feast 
which was instituted a full year later, means the same 
that the Fourth Gospel means elsewhere by believing 
on Jesus. It indicates an act of the will whereby we 
make Jesus' ideals and motives our own. 

Neither does the simple ethical Gospel of Jesus, when 
viewed as a whole, warrant the doctrine, so commonly 
taught by the church, that he saves > us by his atoning 
death, the super-merits of which are, in some magical 
way, imputed to us. If it had not been for the promin- 
ence of the vicarious idea in Jewish theology, and in 
certain other religious cults, no Christian theologian 
would have construed the few isolated and purely random 
sayings of Jesus in reference to his death in such a way 
as to make them the basis for the substitutionary theory 
of the atonement. Jesus himself does not create the im- 
pression that he saves us by the merits of his death rather 
than by the inspiration of his life. The sacrificial 
element, in the substitutionary sense, has been read into 
the saving work of Jesus, not out of it. His death was 
only the logical result of his devotion to a great ideal 
and to an overmastering sense of duty. Instead of its 
super-meritoriousness being mechanically put down to 



190 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

our credit, it must inspire in ns the same heroic devotion 
to the same ideals. If it fails to do this, it fails in its 
saving influence upon us. There is nothing in the teach- 
ing of Jesus, much less in his spirit, that warrants us to 
believe that his death on the cross will do anything for 
us if it fails to inspire in us the same majestic devotion 
to right and duty that characterized Jesus himself. 

If then it was not by the super-meritoriousness of his 
atoning death, nor by the magic of the sacraments, that 
Jesus sought to make his followers fit subjects of the 
kingdom of God, how did he do it ? 

Nothing really can be simpler than Jesus' efforts to 
convert men from their selfish ways to the unselfish life 
of the kingdom of God. There is nothing unnatural or 
unpsychological about the methods of Jesus. His first 
appeal was to the understanding of his hearers. His 
first effort was to give men light. He began by showing 
men the truth. He revealed God as the Father of the 
whole human race and of each individual of the race. 
He revealed man as a child of God and, therefore, a 
brother — a real brother — to all of whom God is the 
Father. He made it clear that citizenship in the king- 
dom of God does not depend upon being born of father 
Abraham, or upon faithfulness to the priestly system, 
but upon living as a child of God and as a brother — 
a real brother — to all men. He showed men the nature 
of righteousness and its blessedness ; and he showed them 
the folly of sin and its curse. And all his teachings, no 
matter how profound the subject, were presented in the 
simple language of the common people. All his dis- 
courses were profusely illustrated with objects from 
nature, and with incidents from the everyday life of the 
people. In his clear, forceful appeals to the understand- 
ing of his audience Jesus discloses one of the essentials in 
the work of christianizing individuals. Men must be 
made to see and understand the truth before they can 



The Church and the Intetisive Growth of the Kingdom 191 

be expected to live it. Jesus was a teacher, not a priest. 
The second noteworthy thing that Jesus did was to 
appeal to the moral sense, or the loill, of those whom he 
instructed in the truth. To know the truth is very im- 
portant, but it is not sufficient of itself. It is very im- 
portant that men should know the will of the Father, 
but it is more important that they should will to do His 
will. Jesus understood life. He knew that all our efforts 
to make men good are wasted until we have succeeded in 
quickening the will-to-be-good. Therefore Jesus first 
gave men light, and then appealed to them to live up to the 
light which they had. Although Jesus studiously avoided 
emotional excitement, he did not slight the emotions in 
his efforts to reach the will. He revealed the Father's 
tender love; and then appealed to the people to be the 
kind of children with whom such a loving Father could 
be pleased. He revealed to sinners the folly of their way, 
and the sure destruction that awaits them if they persist 
in their sins; and then plead with them to repent and 
return to their heavenly Father who is as ready to for- 
give His penitent children as an earthly parent is. In 
his clear appeals to the understanding of his audience, 
and in his fervent appeals to their moral sense, Jesus, 
like the prophets before him, stands in strong contrast to 
the mechanical religious teachers of his day, and to many 
since his day. 

Jesus appealed not only to the understanding and the 
will of his followers, but also to their love and their 
loyalty. One of his supreme efforts was to draw to him- 
self a circle of followers who would be loyal to him and 
to the kingdom of God to which he had dedicated all his 
powers. The very last test that he made of his disciples 
was the loyalty test. Three times he put the question to 
Simon Peter: Simon, do you love me? . . . Simon, are 
you sure that you love me ? . . . Simon, are you sure 
that you love me more than you love this beautiful lake 
and fishing on this lake ? And when Simon said : Lord, 



192 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

Thou knowest that I love Thee, Jesus said: Then you 
are my disciple. A loving and intelligent loyalty to 
Jesus and to the cause of the kingdom of God is one of 
the supreme requisites of Christian discipleship. Noth- 
ing else can take the place of it. Baptisms, fastings, and 
communions are as nothing compared with it. I^ot only 
did this spirit of loyalty make devoted missionaries of 
the disciples, but it also had a transforming effect on 
their life and conduct as nothing else could have. Loving 
loyalty to a person like Jesus Christ, and intelligent 
loyalty to such ethical and social ideals as those which are 
represented in the doctrine of the kingdom of God, will 
have a regenerating effect upon the individual's character 
as no amount of religious rites and ceremonies can ever 
have. 

The final redemptive purpose of Jesus was the creation 
of a regenerated environment — the kingdom of God — in 
which individual growth in righteousness would be as 
free and as spontaneous as possible. Out in the unre- 
generated Gentile world, Jesus said Christian disciple- 
ship would be difficult, and in many cases quite impos- 
sible. But in the kingdom of God, or in the regenerated 
social order, individual growth in righteousness would 
be as natural as the growth of a healthy tree in a well- 
kept garden. It is in and through the kingdom of God 
that Jesus will ever be present with his disciples. It is 
in and through the kingdom of God that the Holy Spirit 
will work with us and for us. Participation in the king- 
dom of God will have a transforming effect on the char- 
acter of the individual as life outside of the kingdom 
cannot furnish. 

Jesus then tried to make men fit subjects of his king- 
dom here and hereafter by a calm, clear appeal to the 
understanding, the will, and the loyalty of the individual 
disciples, plus the ethically transforming effect which life 
in a regenerated society will have upon individual 
character. 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 193 

It is a mistake for tlie church to attempt to make Chris- 
tians by any less vital methods than Jesus himself used. 
It is a mistake for the church to slight the ethical methods 
of her Master, and to continue magnifying the mechanical 
methods of the priests. 

The first duty of the church is to teach, in simple 
language, the fundamental principles of the kingdom as 
they are revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus. Men 
must be made to understand what citizenship in the king- 
dom requires of them, before they can become real citizens. 
The church must make clear what the vital, human 
religion of the kingdom implies for all the people under 
all the human and divine relationships which bind indi- 
viduals to each other and to their God. Jesus did not 
blame the masses of his day for not seeing more in 
religion than the keeping of the traditions of the elders 
and the perfunctory performance of the priestly require- 
ments. They did not know better because the church had 
not taught them better. It is the duty of the church 
to furnish the light in which men shall walk. The priest 
must yield his time-honored place to the teacher. A 
teaching church must take the place of the ritualistic 
church. 

In addition to generating light the church must also 
generate moral motive power. Until we have stimulated 
a man's will-to-be-good everything else that we may do 
will, from a pure moral point of view, go to waste. So 
long as a man does not will to be good there is nothing 
either on earth or in heaven that can make him good. 
If a man does not want to be good all the water in the 
holy Jordan, and all the consecrated wine and wafers in 
Christendom, will avail nothing at all. The moral life, 
has its tap-root in the will-to-be-moral. Regeneration 
from creature selfishness to unselfish Christian love can- 
not be accomplished by holy magic. It can never be 
accomplished apart from the individual's own will-to-be- 
regenerated. Eugenics, environment, and the various 



194 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

forms of social service, are of great importance, as I 
shall endeavor to show in the next section. But all of 
these disciplines, important as they are, can, from a pure 
moral point of view, do no more than make it as natural 
and as easy as possible for the will to be good. The en- 
lightening and the stimulating of the moral will is, there- 
fore, the paramount thing that we must aim at in our 
efforts to make men citizens of the kingdom of God. In 
this most essential thing in Christian culture the church 
has been seriously at fault. She has disregarded the 
fundamental laws of psychology and of pedagogy. All 
through history she has appealed to the superstitions and 
the credulity of the people, rather than to their enlightened 
wills. We are still magnifying the magical efficacy of 
the sacraments, of creedal faith, and of mere church mem- 
bership, rather than the need of a good will — a will that 
is intelligently devoted to such holy and rational ends 
as those implied in the doctrine of the kingdom of God. 
Our church mechanics have been detrimental to that vital 
type of religion which the social prophets and Jesus 
representaed, and which our age needs. 

In addition to generating light and motive power the 
church must create and maintain a moral and spiritual 
environmeni in which the enlightened and well-inten- 
tioned individual can be what he could not be outside of 
this environment. The individual must not only know 
what is required of him, and be willing to be and to do 
what he knows he ought to be and do, but he must also 
have helpy — the help that can come only through life in 
a community that is dedicated to the cause to which he 
wishes to dedicate himself. No individual, no matter 
how strong and determined his good will may be, can be 
by himself alone what he could be through association 
and communion with other wills like his own. This law 
of the social and the spiritual world has its analogy in 
the physical world. For example: an ordinary steel 
magnet has a certain lifting or drawing power of its own. 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 195 

It may liave the power to lift a grain or two of iron 
filings by virtue of its own inherent strength. But place 
a number of such magnets together so as to form a com- 
munity of magnets, and the lifting or drawing power of 
each individual magnet will become considerably in- 
creased. The magnets have, in some way, magnetized 
or influenced each other. A magiietic field has been created 
in which each individual magnet has become strengthened 
because of its place in the community of magnets. Some- 
thing like that happens when a number of men and women 
unite to form a Christian congregation. When a number 
of people are drawn and held together by an intelligent 
loyalty to a person like Jesus Christ; and when such a 
community dedicates itself to the cause of the kingdom 
of God, each individual member of it can be and do what 
he could not be and do by himself alone. We must not 
fail to recog-nize the value of the church in this social 
sense. Complete salvation for the individual is possible 
only through his participation in a community that has 
salvation. The individual who wishes to become an ac- 
tive citizen of the kingdom, and who wishes to make his 
individual efforts count in the establishing of the king- 
dom, must affiliate himself with an institution that is 
dedicated to this end. In this sense, the church, or some 
other institution that dedicates itself to the cause of the 
kingdom, is indispensable to both individual and social 
salvation. 

And, finally, in her efforts to create an environment in 
which men will be encouraged and helped to be good, the 
church must reach out into the community. The many 
people in the comunity who are outside of the church, and 
the many in the church who are out of touch with her 
life and teaching, can be influenced only as the chris- 
tianizing influence of the church penetrates beyond her 
own borders. I see no prospect of any decided increase 
either in the membership of the church or in the matter 
of church attendance, in the near future. The hope of 



196 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

the cliiirch lies in the projection of herself and her in- 
fluence into the community, rather than in drawing the 
community into herself. There are many people who 
must be christianized, if christianized at all, through the 
christianizing of the community itself. 

II 

CHRISTIANIZING THE COMMUNITY 

The christianizing of the individual is our primary 
task. But the average individual cannot be made Chris- 
tian and kept Christian unless we christianize the com- 
munity of which he is an organic part. Individual and 
social salvation are inseparable. Society cannot be re- 
generated apart from the individual units that compose it ; 
and the individual units cannot be completely regenerated 
apart from the regeneration of society itself. Complete 
salvation is a matter of individual and social action and 
reaction. 

The Influence of Environment. — Science, long ago, 
called our attention to the importance of environment as 
a factor in the development of life. Long and careful 
experimentation proved environment to be the chief fac- 
tor in the evolution of the lower forms of life. Charles 
Darwin, by means of forty years of patient experimenta- 
tion, proved that environment is the controlling factor 
in the origin and development of the different animal 
species. Botanists have proved that environment is the 
prime factor in the growth and variation of plants. Psy- 
chology and the social sciences have furnished convincing 
evidence that environment is one of the paramount fac- 
tors in the culture of human life as well as of the life 
of the plant and the animal, and in the culture of the 
soul as well as of the body. The evidence of psycho- 
logical and biological experimentation favors the opin- 
ion that environment outweighs all the other determin- 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 197 

able factors. In many cases tlie environment seems to 
determine the strength and direction of the will. En- 
vironment is, so far as present scientific tests can deter- 
mine, the chief architect of human destiny. The lead- 
ing social workers in this country and in Europe agree 
with the conclusions of experimental science on this point. 
Jacob Riis, after long and intimate acquaintance with 
the children of ]N'ew York's slums, said: '^The environ- 
ment counts 90%''; and later added: "make it 99%." 
Mr. Riis no doubt overstated the case when he said 
that environment counts 99% in the unfolding of the life 
even of the children of the slums. There is no known 
universal law or principle that controls human destiny 
as the law of gravitation is conceded to govern the move- 
ments of physical bodies. The higher the being, the more 
mysterious and indeterminable elements there are in its 
behavior. Darwin, followed by Weisman, held that ac- 
quired habits and characteristics are not transmissible 
through procreation. Their theory has not been dis- 
proved by later and more accurate experimentation. But 
it does not follow from this fact, as many have assumed, 
that all normal human beings are born so nearly alike that 
you can put them under the same environmental influences 
and through the same environmental processes and be 
sure of similar results. Such is not the case. That the 
native endowment of the individual (the embryonic 
material of which the organism is formed and the way 
the material is organized before birth) is an important 
factor in the determining of human destiny, was shown by 
the investigations of Francis Galton, the noted English 
biologist and anthropologist. Galton, assisted by a 
number of scientific co-workers in Europe and America, 
made a scientific study of twins in the interest of a more 
exact knowledge of the mysterious forcees of human life. 
Only twins of the same sex were studied, because being 
conceived at the same instant of time and formed under 
identical conditions in the same sac of the uterus, they 



198 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

are as nearly alike in their pre-natal environment and in 
their ancestral inheritance as any two individuals can be. 
The comparative study of the unfolding of their lives will 
reveal the influence of life-forces which the study of other 
individuals does not reveal. The scientific study of many 
pairs of twins, born and reared under the most diverse 
conditions, proved that the native endowment of the in- 
dividual is a factor that must be reckoned with seriously 
in our theorizing about human life and conduct.^ Gal- 
ton's later studies of family characteristics confirmed the 
correctness of his former position.^ 

That the native endowment of the individual is an 
important factor in the life of the individual is confirmed 
by the records of the more recent mental tests and measure- 
ments. These tests show that the children of the same 
parents, even twins of the same sex, are not born with the 
same mental ability, or with the same likes and dislikes. 
Putting them under the identical environmental influences 
and through the identical environmental processes, will 
not produce identical results. This is a fact that must be 
taken into account not only in our theory of individual 
conduct and destiny, but also in our theory of social 
organization. Government of the people cannot be 
grounded in the doctrine that all normal human beings 
are bom about equal, and that placed in an equally favor- 
able environment they will all be equally able and equally 
good. That is not true. 

But after all the evidence in favor of this or of that 
theory of human conduct and destiny is weighed, the 
consensus of the scientific opinion of the last fifty years 
is that the environmental factor is the most important 
of all the forces that enter into the shaping of human 
destiny. We can say with certainty : that whatever native 
ability an individual may have can be brought to full 

^ cf. Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, especially the 
chapter on Twins. 

'^ cf . Galton, Natural Inheritance. 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 199 

and fruitful exercise only under favorable environmental 
conditions. This, perhaps, is more true of the individ- 
ual's moral life than it is of his mental or physical life. 
Where the environment is bad it is not only difficult to 
get men to accept Christ, but it is more difficult still for 
them to live Christ if they do accept him. A man from 
the "red light district," converted at an evangelistic meet- 
ing, and compelled to go back to the '^red light district" 
and among his '^red light" associates to earn his daily 
bread and to seek his necessary recreation, has a slim 
chance to remain converted. Modern science has cast 
doubt even upon the doctrine of the perseverance of the 
saints in a community that is complacently left to the 
devil. We can say v^ith certainty: that certain classes 
of people cannot be regenerated apart from the regenera- 
tion of their environment. The theological doctrine of 
salvation through sup^ernatural agencies has kept the 
church from taking this information of science v^ith the 
seriousness that it deserves. 

Constructive Community Redemption Begins with the 
Home. — The first thing in a constructive program of 
community redemption that demands the serious attention 
of the church, and of all far-sighted social reformers, is 
the family, or the home. The family is the cell, or struc- 
tural unit, of the social organism. Society, like the 
physical body, cannot be healthier than the structural cells 
that compose it. The community cannot be better than 
the sum total of its families or homes. A number of bad 
homes may infect a v^hole community, physically and 
morally. It is usually among the over-worked, under- 
fed, and poorly housed people that tuberculosis, infantile 
paralysis, and a number of other communicable diseases 
have their lair, from v^hence they spread into the com- 
munity at large. In the same v^ay a few immoral homes 
may infect scores of individuals in the community. In 
her efforts to conserve the life of the people the church 



200 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

must be vitally ooncemed about tbe homes in which they 
live. She must try to counteract everything that threatens 
the physical health and the moral integrity of the home. 
The kingdom of God cannot make progress in a community 
where home-life is at low ebb. 

There are many things in our modern life that threaten 
the family, and that militate against a wholesome and 
elevating home-life. There are many people, from widely 
different walks of life, and from wholly different motives, 
who advocate the abolition of the individual home and 
the Christian family. A certain class of social reformers 
oppose the Christian family on the ground that it is an 
economic evil. Some hold that it is merely a legal means 
of perpetuating large and ill-gotten fortunes. By be- 
queathing immense fortunes to the tenth and the twentieth 
generation of the same family stock, the money is with- 
held from the community from whence it originally came. 
Others oppose the individual home on the ground of its 
economic wastefulness. These agitators advocate "free 
love'' instead of legal marriage; and they recommend 
community nurseries instead of homes to take care of the 
children. 

We know that the family has frequently been made a 
means of holding on to vast fortunes from generation to 
generation of undeserving individuals. But a better way 
to prevent this particular social evil than the abolition 
of the family, would be the passing of a law making it 
impossible for parents to bequeath to their children — 
often altogether unworthy and undeserving children — 
vast sums of money which by right belongs to the com- 
munity. And we also know that the keeping up of so 
many individual homes is a wasteful thing economically. 
A great deal of heat, light, furniture, etc., could be saved 
if the children were cared for in community nurseries. 
Five hundred children coujd be fed more economically 
in one institution than in one hundred and fifty individual 
homes. And many people who are now employed in non- 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 201 

productive house-hold duties in the many individual 
homes, could be employed in productive pursuits. In 
very many cases also the abolition of the individual home 
would be a distinct moral gain. It is evident that a good 
community institution could furnish better physical, 
mental, and moral training for its inmates than multi- 
tudes of our present homes are furnishing. But neither 
the charge of economical wastefulness, nor that of the 
moral and social inefficiency of many of our present homes, 
is the final word in the argument for or against the indi- 
vidual home., I^othing else can ever take the place of 
parental love wisely directed, ^o state institution can 
ever do for children what a good home will do. And for 
the developing of efficient homes the kingdom of God 
bids us labor. 

Another class of people, among them not a few of our 
modern authors and artists, oppose the Christian idea of 
the family from an altogether different angle. They 
chafe under the binding marriage that underlies the 
present family. They rebel against the idea that 
the parties who make the marriage contract should not 
have the right to break it when the union is no longer 
congenial or desirable. They advocate the abolition of 
the Christian family on the ground that the union of a 
man and a woman which they are not free to sever when it 
pleases them to do so, is an infringement on individual 
liberty, and stands in the way of the highest self-realiza- 
tion. They advocate trial matches instead of legal mar- 
riages; and hireling nurses are to take the place of the 
mother in case there should be any children. Only the 
other day the papers reported that one of our popular 
authors, a woman whose stories are read by many thou- 
sands of American people, has been secretly married 
for five years to a prominent pianist and musical com- 
poser. The wedding was intended as "a trial match" 
for one year, but the union has been so congenial that it 
has not yet been broken. Here are some of the agree- 



202 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

ments of the "trial matcli:" "Two breakfasts together a 
week are to be considered sufficient; children, if any, 
should bear the paternal name until they reach the years 
of discretion, when they may make their own choice; the 
wife retains her own name; marriage is not to interfere 
with the studies or pursuits of either party ; husband and 
wife will live separately, maintaining separate quarters, 
meeting per ^inclination' not ^per duty' ; neither party 
will have to account for the time spent away from the 
other," etc. Much of our modern fiction is tainted 
by this kind of thing. The anti-social spirit of "the 
trial match" and self -divorcement is insidiously pro- 
mulgated through the pages of fiction and the films of 
the moving picture. It is needless to say that the 
kingdom of God will not come in an atmosphere like that. 
Another enemy of the home is the pagan commercialism 
which controls so much of our life. Modern industry has 
contributed much to home-life by taking work out of 
the dwelling house and doing it in mills and factories. 
The modem house is cleaner and more conducive to 
home-life than the house of the pre-industrial age, which 
was both workshop and home. But what industry has 
contributed to home-life by taking work out of the house 
and doing it in factories, it has nullified in many other 
ways. For the sake of profit modern industry has 
been tying men and women to machines for ten and 
twelve hours a day, and often for seven days of the week, 
thus leaving little time and still less energy for real 
home-life. For the sake of profit it has demanded a 
maximum amount of work for a minimum wage, which, 
in many cases has necessitated under-feeding, scanty 
clothing, poor housing, and frequently has driven the wife 
and mother and the children of tender years, 
into the mills to help increase the family income. 
The commercial spirit which values big rents above 
healthy children, has been substituting tenements, apart- 
ments, and flats for single houses. All these things 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 203 

mean the physical, mental and moral deterioration of 
many homes. 

Any attempt at social rebuilding that fails to aim at 
a physically, mentally, and morally efficient parenthood, 
and a sanctified home-life, fails to square with the re- 
quirements of the religion of the kingdom of God. The 
home must be made to function at its best if individuals 
and society shall be brought to that point of efficiency and 
well-being which the prophetic conception of the kingdom 
of God implies. 

Fundamental Requisities of an Effcient Home-life. — 
The kind of home which the kingdom of God implies 
presupposes Christian marriage. This, however, means 
more than the formal sanction of the church. Christian 
marriage implies the closest and most sacred union 
of personalities that can be formed. ^'The twain shall 
become one flesh.'' It is the union through which 
two personalities are to realize their own highest and 
best selves, and through which they are to make their best 
contribution to society. The union is, for this social 
reason, the most binding relationship that can be entered. 
"A man shall forsake his father and mother, and cleave 
to his wife." According to the records of Mark and 
Luke the union is indissoluble. Nothing but death can 
relieve either party of the obligation.^ According to 
Matthew the union can be severed only on the ground 
of the sexual infidelity of one of the contracting parties.- 

No other teaching of Jesus has been criticized so much 
as his insistence on the indissolubleness of the marriage 
relation. To enforce his teachings literally would un- 
doubtedly result in many hardships. There are cases 
where divorce is clearly the lesser of two evils both so 
far as the individuals in the affair and society itself are 
concerned. No reasonable person would dispute this. 

iMark 10, 2-12; Luke 16-18. 
2 Matt. 5, 31-32; 19, 3-n. 



204 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

But Jesus' lofty view of marriage, and his uncompromis- 
ing attitude toward the easy-going divorce of his day, will 
appear less offensive to the modern conscience when we 
approach the subject from the social rather than from the 
individual angle. Christian marriage concerns society as 
well as the bride and the bridegroom. There are three 
contracting parties in a real marriage: the bride, the 
bridegroom, and society. These three parties are 
mutually concerned in the wedding contract, and they 
must continue to be mutually concerned about the suc- 
cessful and happy perpetuating of the contract. The 
marital union does not exist for the pleasure or the con- 
venience of a man and a woman, but for the perpetuating 
of society — for the rearing and training of children to 
take their place in society. Whenever a marriage fails 
society suffers as well as the bride and the bridegroom. 
Children cannot be trained to take their place in the 
kind of society that the kingdom of God implies under 
a system of trial marriage and easy divorce. Society, 
for whose perpetuation the marital union exists, should 
enter more conscientiously and intelligently into the wed- 
ding contract and into the perpetuating of the contract 
— into the granting of the license which legalizes the 
union and into the granting of divorce which legalizes the 
breaking up of the union. There is no question that a 
reckless attitude toward marriage such as characterizes 
our own day, or an easy-going divorce such as character- 
ized Jesus' day, results in more unnecessary hardships for 
individuals and in more evils for society than would 
result from the enforcement of Jesus' rigid attitude 
toward the matter. If we will try, we may find a satis- 
factory mean between the seemingly rigid attitude of 
Jesus and the extremely reckless attitude of the mass 
of the people. If individuals and society shall attain the 
standard of the kingdom of God marriage must be brought 
to the point of highest efficiency, and divorce must be 
reduced to a minimum. 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 205 

Christian marriage, which looks to the moral supple- 
mentation of two personalities and to the rearing of 
children for society, and which, for these social reasons, 
is to be the most indissoluble of all unions, presupposes 
thoughtful courtship. This holiest and most binding of 
all human relationships must not be entered without seri- 
ous thought. The thoughtlessness with which the marriage 
relationship is entered is one of the outstanding social 
evils of our day. Many a man shows more care in the 
selection of his automobile, and many a woman is more 
exercised over the selection of her wardrobe, than they 
are in the selection of their life-partner. This is one 
reason for the failure of so many marriages. 

Christian marriage presupposes, finally, a pure rela- 
tionship between the sexes before and after marriage. 
The holy ends of Christian marriage are difficult to at- 
tain where the community sanctions a loose and unclean 
relationship between the sexes. The most basic and, 
therefore, the most inviolable of all human relationships 
is that of sex, for the very perpetuation of society de- 
pends upon it. ]^ot only the welfare and happiness of 
the individual home, but of society itself, demands the 
most intelligent and moral public sentiment on this basic 
matter. It is a duty of the highest individual and social 
significance that the home, the church, and the schools 
should cooperate in creating the most wholesome pub- 
lic sentiment that is possible on marriage and on 
all the relationships which Christian marriage presup- 
poses. 

We should bear in mind then that the Christian home 
exists for social ends, and not for the convenience or the 
pleasure of the individual parties to the contract. It 
exists for the sake of children, — for the training of chil- 
dren for their efficient participation in society. This 
imposes upon the individual home, and upon the com- 
munity of which the home is an organic part, certain very 
sacred obligations. The training of children for efficient 



206 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

participation in society implies a number of things to 
which we have given too little thought and care. 

The child that is to participate efficiently in the kind of 
society that the kingdom of God implies must, first of all, 
he well horn. This is the first social right of the child, — 
a right which many are being denied. We have been 
altogether too lax in the matter of eugenics, or good breed- 
ing, as it applies to the human species. We have given 
much thought to the breeding of our pedigreed animals; 
but we have been criminally careless in the conception and 
birth of children. Multitudes of children are born each 
year, who are disqualified for life because the plain laws 
of eugenics were utterly disregarded. The world is full 
of crippled and incompetent people, a burden to themselves 
and to society, whose chief or only fault is that they were 
ill-born. They are crippled, or otherwise handicapped 
for life, because they were born of diseased parents; or 
because they were conceived at a time and under condi- 
tions when the law of eugenics warns against conception. 

We have known for a long time that the sin of sexual 
excess or indiscretion is visited upon the innocent children 
as well as upon the guilty parents. Venereal disease 
has been the cause of more human misery than any other 
malady known to man. In its most malignant form it 
not only spells doom for the guilty man or woman, but it 
is visited with frightful consequences upon the innocent 
children unto the third and fourth generation. The 
testimony of practicing physicians as to the number of 
venereally diseased patients who come to them for treat- 
ment, and the probable number who doctor themselves, is 
both shocking and alarming. The medical records of the 
army have confirmed the testimony of the practicing phy- 
sicians as to the appalling prevalence of this disease. I 
heard a prominent physician state that the army officials 
fear venereal diseases more than pneumonia or typhoid 
fever or the enemy's bullets. The government, during the 
late war, put up a valiant fight to control venereal dis- 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 207 

ease in the army and navy. And while we do not doubt 
that the methods which were adopted were the best for 
army purposes, under the conditions that surrounded the 
encampments, we believe that it would be unwise to adopt 
the same methods of venereal control among the civilian 
population. 

The first public safeguard against this social scourge is 
not an anti-toxin that will make the individual, who is 
guilty of illicit sexual intercourse, immune from sexual 
disease, but a strong individual and public sentiment 
against all sexual irregularity and excess. And in addi- 
tion to a more wholesome public sentiment, which we 
know will not be sufficient to control completely the deep- 
rooted racial desire for sexual gratification, we should 
place all venereally diseased persons under as strict a 
quarantine as we do the victim of small pox or diphtheria. 
While this might cause a few innocent persons to suffer, 
it is a social need of such importance that the few lesser 
evils that it might cause should be overlooked for social 
ends. It should be made impossible for any one to marry 
while suffering from any venereal disease. And in addi- 
tion to all other possible safeguards, we should spare no 
efforts to uproot from our communities the houses of 
prostitution, and every form of professional harlotry, 
which we know to be the chief sources of the perennial 
contamination. 

We have also known for a long time that the excessive 
use of alcoholic beverages is visited upon the children and 
the children's children with very baneful results. The 
children of habitual drunkards, like the children of 
venereally diseased parents, are, as a rule, physically and 
mentally disqualified to compete with their better born 
neighbors in the stern battle of life. But our municipali- 
ties have been continuing the saloon all these years in 
spite of our knowledge of the frightful wreckage it has 
been making of child-life. 

And only recently we learned that the fatigue toxin, 



208 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

which is the peculiar product of our modem sped-up in- 
dustry and of our sped-up dissipation, has a most serious 
effect on the children of the parents whose systems have 
heen thoroughly poisoned by this virus. Careful inves- 
tigations, especially among the factory workers of Italy, 
has shown that the mortality rate of the children of 
mothers who, in their girlhood, worked long hours in fac- 
tories, is much greater than it is among the children of 
mothers who never did any constantly fatiguing work. 
And the children of these fatigue-poisoned mothers, in 
case they live through the critical period of infancy, are 
lighter in weight and physically weaker, and thus a 
readier prey for disease germs, than the children of the 
mothers who, in their girlhood and later, were not the 
victims of long hours of monotonous toil in unsanitary 
mills and factories. In this way modern industry has 
been mortgaging the future of society by dooming great 
multitudes of children before they are born.i 

The law of eugenics is clear, and it is as stem and as 
unmerciful as it is clear. The child that is to grow into 
the highest type of man, — ^the type of man who can par- 
ticipate efficiently in such a society as the kingdom of God 
implies, — ^must be well born. The institutions that are 
interested in a better and more efficient manhood, and in a 
better social order, must begin their labors here at the 
fountain source, — here in the home where life begins, 
where the foundations are laid and the first impressions 
made. 

To grow into the type of man that the kingdom of God 
implies the child must not only be well born, but also 
well reared. This is the second social right of the child, 
— a right which multitudes of the innocents are being 
denied. The proper nurture of the child implies religious 
training. The church has done well in the past to empha- 
size the religious training of the child both in the home 
and in the church. One of the most encouraging things 
in the church at the present time is the revival of interest 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 209 

in the moral and religious training of tlie children. But 
there are other absolutely essential things in the training 
of the child about which the church has concerned herself 
too little. In order to build the mental, moral, and relig- 
ious superstructure which the kingdom of God implies, a 
basis must be laid for it in sufficient wholesome food, 
clothing, and shelter. Where this basis is wanting the 
superstructure cannot be reared. One of the saddest 
things in our social life is the fact that every large com- 
munity in rich America has its multitudes of innocent 
children who are denied these first requisites of life. 

Investigations made recently in two of our metropol- 
itan cities revealed the painful fact that great numbers 
of children in these fabulously wealthy communities are 
coming to school hungry day after day. Many children 
(usually where the mothers are employed in mills or fac- 
tories) bring a penny instead of lunch, and with the penny 
buy a pickle, a candy stick, or some crackers. The child 
who comes to school hungry morning after morning, and 
who lunches on a pickle, a candy stick, or a cracker, has 
a slim chance to gTow into a strong and healthy man or 
woman, such as the kingdom of God implies that its citi- 
zens shall be. The investigators reported four primary 
causes of this deplorable state of affairs: (1) drunkenness; 

(2) indifference and criminal carelessness of parents; 

(3) ignorance and helplessness of parents; and (4) wages 
inadequate tp purchase sufficient wholesome food, a condi- 
tion which, in many cases, has driven the mothers into the 
mills to help increase the family income, thus greatly 
aggravating the otherwise bad home conditions by taking 
the mother away from the children the greater part of the 
day. 

The churches of the community should not be ignorant 
of such conditions; and they dare not be indifferent to 
them if they know them. If the liquor business helps to 
send children to school hungry every morning we dare not 
rest until the social curse is removed from the community. 



210 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

Parents who are able to care for their children but are 
too bad or too indifferent to do so, should be compelled to 
do it. Such chastisement is a right that belongs to the 
community. Parents who do not know how to take care 
of their children should have our help. Adequate instruc- 
tion in the art of home-keeping and the science of child- 
nurture should be a part of the educational program of 
the community. And business that could pay a living 
wage to its employees but refuses to do so, should have 
the curse of Almighty God pronounced upon it. 

In the E^ew Republic of a few months ago the startling 
statement was made, on the authority of Dr. Thomas D. 
Wood, chairman of the Commission of Health Problems 
in Education, I^ational Council of Education, that 20% 
of the American school children — 4,500,000 — are suffer- 
ing from malnutrition. Dr. William P. P. Emmerson, 
an eminent Boston authority, places the number of im- 
properly nourished children even higher than Dr. Wood. 
These figures are not the exaggerations of social agitators, 
but the report to the Federal Children's Bureau of the 
findings and opinions of two impartial scientists. The 
chief causes which these men assigned for this appalling 
state of affairs are poverty and ignorance. 

Whatever the cause or the causes may be, there is some- 
thing seriously wrong somewhere so long as such condi- 
tions exist. It is usually among the ill-born and under- 
nourished children that the mentally backward children 
are found. And from these same ranks will come large 
accessions to the morally and socially delinquent youths 
and adults. Science has discovered a very close connec- 
tion between under-nourishment and mental and moral 
delinquency. There is a sub-surface connection between 
our scanty breakfast tables and our reformatories and 
jails. Here is an unoccupied field for religious service. 
It is the duty of the churches to be vitally interested in the 
condition of child life in their respective communities. It 
is certain that the kingdom of God cannot come, as it 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 211 

should come, in a community of ill-born and under- 
nourished children. The kingdom of God is seriously 
obstructed in a community where poverty and ignorance, 
carelessness and indifference, are making such havoc of 
child life. The children of to-day are the material out of 
which the kingdom of God must be built to-morrow. 

To be well-reared also implies adequate housing. Here 
the modern city faces a social problem the gravity of 
which too few seem to realize. No other single factor is 
a more serious menace to the American family at the 
present time than the bad housing conditions of our 
rapidly growing cities. A clean house, with enough 
rooms of adequate dimensions, with plenty of fresh air 
and sunlight, is an absolute necessity in child nurture. 
A high-bred colt will be stunted in a bad stable; and so 
will a child. Here in America, where God has blessed us 
with an abundance of ground on which to build, there 
should be no occasion for the many multiple dwellings, — 
flats, tenements, apartments, — where individuals are 
herded together like cattle in a box-car. But in spite of 
the abundance of ground the people of our American 
cities are compelled to live as cramped as the people in 
the old centers of civilization in Europe and Asia. I will 
give a few examples of housing conditions that were re- 
ported recently by investigating commissions. Similar 
conditions can be found in every large city in the United 
States, and in many of our smaller cities and towns. 

This is the report of what was found in the neighbor- 
hood of one of the large steel mills of Pittsburgh, Pa. 
"In one apartment a man, his wife and baby, and two 
boarders, slept in one room, and five boarders occupied 
two beds in an adjoining room. . . . 'Not one house in 
the entire settlement had provision for drinking water for 
its tenants. . . . They went to an old pump in the mill 
yard, 360 steps from the farthest apartment, and down 
75 stairs. This town pump was the sole supply of drink- 
ing water within reach of 91 households, comprising 568 



212 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

persons. . . . Another row of one-family houses had a 
curious wooden chute arrangement on the hack porches, 
down which waste water was poured that ran through open 
drains in the rear yard to the open drains between this 
row of houses and the next. . . . They carried other 
things besides waste water — filth of every description was 
emptied down these chutes, for these six families and three 
families below on the first floor had no closet accommoda- 
tions, and were living like animals." ^ 

This is a paragraph from an appeal which a home mis- 
sionary, in one of our large cities, made to the Ofiicial 
Board of his church: ^Tn speaking of the homes from 
which these children come, I hardly think that we should 
recognize them as such. One home that I am thinking 
of consists of one room, in which a bed and a couch 
are on one side, the cook stove at the foot end of the bed, 
and a table on the other side ; no rug or carpet, and equally 
as much grease as anything else. The gas burns all the 
time because it is so dark. One of our kindergarten 
children comes from this home. There is no yard, and no 
place to play but on the street, or in this one room. Most 
of the children are brought up in similar surroundings. 
In a good many homes the mother is obliged to work in 
the factory. She takes the children out of bed and brings 
them to the nursery — I dare say without breakfast. They 
play around until nine o'clock, when the other children 
come in for the morning kindergarten." How can we 
hope to rear American citizens, to say nothing of citizens 
of the kingdom of God, under such conditions ? 

The Philadelphia newspapers reported recently that 
the Philadelphia Housing Commission had investigated 
8,334 dwelling houses and had pronounced the majority 
of them ^VhoUy unfit for human habitation." One of the 
best authorities on the housing problem in the United 
States says that housing conditions in New York City 

^ Painters Row, EHzabeth Crowell, Charities and Commons, 
Feb. 6, 1909, Vol. 21, pp. 899-910. 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 213 

make real home-life impossible for 1,000,000 people. 

But we need not go to tlie big city to find iniquitous 
housing conditions. They exist in every industrial center 
in rich America. A member of our own Home Mission 
Board, working under the directions of the Federal Coun- 
cil of Churches, investigated housing conditions about the 
Bethlehem steel mills. South Bethlehem, Pa., and he re- 
ported conditions as appalling as those found about the 
steel mills of Pittsburgh. It is estimated that at least 
5,000,000 of our American people are living in houses 
that are ''wholly unfit for human habitation.'' When the 
mayor of one of our large cities recently told a mob of 
strikers to go home and behave themselves, they gave the 
grim reply: ''We have no homes to go to.'' It is useless 
to tell people to go home and behave themselves when 
they have nothing that can be called a home. Preaching 
the Gospel will have no effect on these people until we 
first regenerate our method of housing them. It is esti- 
mated that 10,000,000 more of our American people live 
in apartments and flats in which a sanctified home-life 
is exceedingly difiicult, and in very many cases quite 
impossible. Many families are crowded together where 
the privacy and the comfort which real home-life demands 
are not possible. 

A new feature of the housing problem from which prac- 
tically every urban community in America is suffering is 
the hasty and wholly inadequate reconstruction of single 
dwelling houses into fiats and apartments. Houses that 
were built twelve or fifteen years ago for one family are 
now being converted into fiats for three or four families. 
A single floor, with no provision for family conveniences 
and comforts is renting for as much as the whole house 
rented for six years ago. In many cases there dare be 
no children, for the law of the house forbids them; and 
in other cases there should be none, for conditions prevent 
their proper care and nurture. Bight here is one of the 
most serious menaces to our American family life. It is 



214 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

a serious matter for a community when there are no hous- 
ing facilities for children. Here is the modern Herod 
slaying the innocents. The Gospel that has nothing to 
say about such things is not the Gospel of the king- 
dom of God. The religion that is ignorant of or uncon- 
cerned about such vital matters as these has no mission in 
our modern life. 

The fundamental source of the housing trouble is the 
fact that the controlling object in our city planning and 
building has always been money, not men. We have been 
planning and building our cities, not with the idea of 
growing strong, healthy people, but with the idea of profit 
for certain classes of people. One class of citizens has 
been allowed to monopolize the building ground in the 
direction in which the city must grow, and to inflate the 
price of the ground to enrich themselves. The land spec- 
ulators have bought up all the desirable building ground 
for half a mile, and at some places for more than a mile, 
beyond the Western limits of my own city. The future 
streets are already staked off. In some places the curbs 
are placed. One of our future streets is already asphalted, 
while streets on which scores of children find their only 
open place to play do not even have the gutters cleaned. 
Everything possible is done to induce the city to grow in 
the direction of the ground held by the speculators. But 
the object is not the future welfare of the citizens of 
Allentown, but profit for the individual speculators. By 
the time the city must have the ground for building 
purposes, a twenty foot lot will cost half as much as an 
ordinary house should cost. This monopolizing of the 
available building ground by private parties is a social 
evil that is practiced in every growing community in the 
country. The land-improvement companies have been 
looked upon as benefactors, whereas in many communities, 
they have been a social evil. Another class of citizens has 
practically monopolized the building trade in most Amer- 
ican cities, and has been erecting the kind of houses that 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 215 

mean most profit for the builders, rather than the kind that 
are most conducive to family life. The landlord class 
has entrenched itself everywhere. They have been inflat- 
ing the price of real estate and boosting the rents. 
During the last few years profiteering in rents in most 
American cities has been scandalous. The landlords 
have been taking advantage of the congested conditions of 
our cities and have been reaping a harvest in rents. 
They have been turning the red blood corpuscles 
of innocent children into glittering gold for themselves. 
In most cities there is a surprising number of real estate 
agents, most of whom are making a fat living playing into 
the hands of the land-speculators and the landlords. The 
results of these practices have been inflated real estate 
values, exorbitant rents, and the consequent crowding of 
the poor into close and unhealthy quarters. If we were 
moved by the kingdom-ideals, which place men above real 
estate, and human comforts and welfare above big rents, 
these things would not be so. 

The solution of the housing problem is not an impossible 
one; and, in communities where there is plenty of avail- 
able building ground, it should not be a very difficult one. 
A few European and Asiatic municipalities have gone a 
great way toward solving the problem. It has been along 
the line of municipal socialism. In such case the city 
buys the necessary building ground for what it is really 
worth ; and improves it with the idea of serving the people. 
The city builds the houses, and does so with the idea of 
growing children in them. The city acts in the capacity 
of landlord and real estate agent, and either sells the 
houses to its citizens at cost, or rents them for the actual 
amount of interest on the original cost of the building, plus 
the cost of the upkeep of the property. In a few cases, 
the city also owns and operates the transportation lines. 
The lines are run for the sake of service to the public, not 
for profit for private parties. This makes it possible for 
the city to be built along the ground, instead of into the 



216 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

air. Many of the people move into the suburbs, or into 
the open country, where they can have gardens and fresh 
air, and still be carried to their places of work in the city 
for a reasonable fare. Where the socializing of the hous- 
ing problem has been given a fair trial it has resulted in 
better and cheaper houses. In Sydney and Melbourne, 
in Australia, and in one or two of the towns of ISTew 
Zealand, houses rented, just before the war, for from one- 
sixth to one-seventh of the average working man's income, 
while here in the United States the rent, at that time, was 
taking from one-fifth to one-fourth of the working man's 
income. 

The kingdom of God is a social order of the highest 
possible type of citizenship; and that implies dwelling 
houses in which a sanctified home-life is possible, and in 
which children can be properly reared and nurtured. 
Interest in the dwelling houses of the community is just 
as much a piece of kingdom service as interest in the com- 
munity's church buildings. 

And, finally, if the community shall be made up of the 
kind of citizens that the kingdom of God implies, an 
efficient-living income must he made possible for every 
family. Much of the average city family's life revolves 
around the weekly or monthly pay-envelope. In the case 
of many families the contents of the pay-enevelope deter- 
mine whether the children shall be adequately nourished, 
clothed, housed and schooled. To me no other sin seems 
so great and so deplorable as the fact that here in America, 
the land of superabundance, so many good, honest, hard- 
working families are doomed to live on less than we know 
to be necessary to live life at its best. 

Shortly before the war the Federal Government ordered 
investigations in several states to determine, as near as 
possible, the amount of income necessary to assure an effi- 
cient living for a family composed of husband and wife 
and three children under working age. At the same time 
a number of similar investigations were made by certain 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 217 

individuals who were interested in this vital matter. The 
conclusions reached in these studies ranged from $600 to 
$1400 as the amount needed, at that time, to make efficient 
living possible for an American family of five. I 
gathered material for one of these studies ; and I was one 
of those who placed the necessary amount for efficient liv- 
ing at $1400. I was quite sure that not one of the investi- 
gators considered anything less than that amount sufficient 
for himself and family to live ^^efficiently and happily." A 
smaller sum might do for the other fellow, but not for our- 
selves. But in the kingdom of God that which will not do 
for ourselves must not be made to do for others. While the 
different investigating committees never compromised on 
the matter, the feeling somehow became quite common 
that $750 was officially considered sufficient for five people 
to live efficiently and happily in the average American 
community. 

About the same time that these inquiries were being con- 
ducted in different communities, Professor Willford Isbell 
King, of the University of Wisconsin, was making a 
study of the distribution of the wealth and income of the 
people of the United States. In that study Professor 
King made the surprising disclosure that the income of 
38.92% of the families of the United States was less than 
$Y00, and of 26.08% of the families it was less than $600 
a year.^ That means that during the decade before the 
war from one-fourth to one-one-third of all the families in 
the country were living on less than the minimum require- 
ment for efficiency and happiness. The income of more 
than one-fourth of all the families, at that time, was not 
sufficient to secure the wholesome food, the necessary cloth- 
ing, the proper shelter, the schooling, etc., that efficient 
living demands. Their income allowed no luxuries. But 
the life that is denied all luxuries is hardly worth living. 
Nothing could be laid aside for the proverbial "rainy 

^ See: The Wealth and Income of the People of the United 
States, Table 49, p. 228. 



218 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

day." It meant a hand-to-moutli living. As long as the 
head of the family remains well and his job lasts, the 
family will be kept from real poverty. But an accident, 
or prolonged unemployment, will push such a family over 
the border into the barren wilderness of want. One-fourth 
of all the families of rich America only a hand's breadth 
from real poverty ! What a state of affairs ! 

But some one will say that these figures of conditions 
prior to 1914 do not represent conditions as they are to- 
day. Perhaps they do not. But, on the whole, things 
have not changed much for the better for the average poor 
family since 1914. In the average commmunity family 
incomes have hardly kept pace with the increase of family 
expenses. The most recent reliable studies of the 
necessary income for a family of ^\q to live efiiciently and 
happily have placed the amount at $1696. And if efficient 
living shall mean enough wholesome food, warm and 
decent-looking clothing, a comfortable house in which to 
live, and adequate school privileges for the children, plus 
a little something for religion and necessary recreation, 
$1696 are not too much. But what percentage of our 
families are getting that amount? According to the re- 
port of the Internal Eevenue Bureau, a few more than 
4,000,000 heads of families filed income tax returns for 
1919. It is quite safe to infer from this that at least 
20,000,000 families had a balance of $2000 or less after 
the legal deductions were made. In 1920 there were 
fewer returns than in 1919. It is altogether probable 
that one-fourth of all the families in the country to-day 
as in 1914 are living on less than the minimum amount 
required for efficient living. 

It is true that under present conditions not enough 
is produced to give everybody an efficient-living income. 
But there is no reason why civilization should continue 
to be conducted on the basis of an annual deficit. Pro- 
fessor Simon ^N". Patten, of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, in his book: "The !New Basis of Civilization/' 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 219 

shows very forcibly that with the present scientific con- 
trol of nature enough could be produced in the United 
States to furnish an efficient and happy living for all of 
us. Reliable studies since his time have proved beyond 
a doubt that if adequate production instead of maximum 
profit were the object of our industrial system enough 
could be produced in the United States to pay a just 
interest on all invested capital, to give a just remunera- 
tion for all special services and skill, and still leave 
enough for every honest family to live an efficient and 
happy life. 

Adequate production of the means of life and the 
equitable distribution of what is produced are among the 
most pressing problems that are awaiting solution. These 
are matters that affect not only the bodies of the in- 
dividual citizens, but their souls as well. These are 
things that touch every phase of our individual and 
social life. Until these problems are solved many other 
kingdom-problems must remain unsolved. 

The Kingdom-Program of ChrisUanizcUion Touches 
Every Phase of the Community's Life. — The work of 
constructive christianization begins with the individual, 
and with the home which makes the first and the deepest 
impression on the individual. But our efforts may not 
end here. There are many things in the average com- 
munity that must be changed before all individuals and all 
homes can be made Christian and kept Christian. Just 
ias a number of bad individuals or bad homes may infect 
a community physically and morally, so there may be 
things in the community that will corrupt individuals and 
homes that might otherwise have remained good and pure. 
The community at large must be as clean as possible, or 
there will be individuals in it who will not be strong 
enough to keep clean. 

The following paragraphs give the substance of three 
investigations that were made recently in three well known 



220 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

and highly respected Christian communities. There is 
little doubt that similar conditions exist in the average big 
community throughout the country. These disclosures 
show very forcibly v^hy so many people are not reached 
by the church, and also why so many whom we do reach 
for a while slip away from us again. 

A large Vice Commission made up of representative 
citizens, led by a courageous pastor of a wealthy and in- 
fluential congregation, made a thorough investigation of 
a particular social evil in a city that is considered a very 
desirable place in which to live. What was found appalled 
the good people of the community. They did not think 
that such things could exist right around them in their 
fair city. But they did exist. The Commission reported 
that there was a professional harlot for every 160 of the 
adult male population of the city. In addition to these 
professional prostitutes, there were many "street-walkers" 
and other immoral women, who solicited their illicit trade 
on the streets of the city and in every public place that 
was open to them. The upwards of sixty-five houses of 
prostitution were patronized by approximately 4000 or 
5000 men each week in a city whose total population is 
only about 65,000. A number of saloons were found open 
on Sundays as well as week days, and some of them were 
regularly harboring professional harlots and lewd women 
in side rooms. In such a community there will be many 
individuals who are not strong enough to keep clean. In 
such a community many a home that might otherwise be 
happy and prosperous will be ruined. In such a com- 
munity much of the church's work with individuals will 
go to waste. 

In another city, not far from the city just referred to, 
a progressive pastor and some of his people in whom the 
social conscience had been awakened, made a study of the 
moral and social conditions in the twelve blocks around 
their church. These are some of the things they found: 
"37 saloons, or licensed liqour houses; 11 beer clubs, mak- 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 221 

ing 48 places where intoxicating liquors could be gotten, 
an average of 4 places to a square, or one for every 30 
families. . . . There were twice as many places of evil 
allurement in this section as churches and Sunday 
schools.'' These conditions existed in what is considered 
a respectable section of a very respectable Pennsylvania 
city. So long as the places of evil allurement greatly out- 
number the institutions of moral and social uplift there 
will be many individuals who cannot be good, and there 
will be many homes that will be unhappy. 

In a prosperous industrial center of another state a 
survey was made of a district in which 900 families lived, 
and it was discovered that 150 of the heads of these fam- 
ilies earned only $600 a year (1912), and that 74 
heads of families had earned a little less than that amount 
in that same year. Some of these people worked for a 
concern that reported, for that year, a semi-annual divi- 
dend of 15% on their stock which was estimated to be 
25% water. Some of these people were working seven 
days of the week, and most of them ten hours a day. 
Many of the dwelling houses in this section were owned by 
the corporation, and were kept in miserable repair. In 
this city there were, no doubt, the same temptations found 
in the other investigations just referred to. Over-worked 
and under-fed, and surrounded by such temptations, how 
could they live up to the lofty ideals of Jesus Christ ! 

Where the good people of the community are ignorant 
of or indifferent to such conditions as described in these 
investigations it will remain impossible for many people 
to be clean and virtuous and good. The "abundant life" 
of the kingdom of God is not possible under such condi- 
tions. 

The Need of Adequate Provision for Play aiid Recre- 
ation. — Constructive christianization concerns itself not 
only with adequate religious and educational opportuni- 
ties, and with the matter of good housing and living wages, 



222 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

but also with the vital matter of recreation and amuse- 
ments. 

Every community should be concerned about the oppor- 
tunity for play for its smaller children. Play is almost 
as vital a matter in the proper nurture of the child as 
food and clothing. It answers a vital need in the 
physical organism. To crush the play-instinct will injure 
the child, and will ultimately affect his manhood. Where 
the commercial spirit uses up all the available building 
ground and piles flat upon flat with no yards in which 
children can play, the community should equip and super- 
intend public play-grounds where this biological need can 
be met. A piece of ground, in the congested parts of the 
city, is worth more as a playground for children than as 
a factory site. In the conservation of its children ancient 
Sparta came nearer the ideal of the kingdom of God than 
most of our modern Christian cities. In the important 
matter of public playgrounds heathen Japan sets a good 
example for Christian America. 

Every community should furnish adequate opportunity 
for wholesome recreation for the older boys and girls, and 
for its men and women. There should be publicly 
supervised places where the youths of both sexes can meet, 
and where men and women can congregate in a clean 
atmosphere, safe from the degrading influences which are 
associated with much of our present-day recreation and 
amusement. More people go wrong during the hours of 
recreation than at any other time. Yet recreation they 
must and will have. Recreation is a biological need that 
should be met in the same sane and thoughtful way that we 
meet the need for education and religion. 

The worst feature about our public amusements is that 
they have become a prey of the commercial spirit. Our 
public amusements are conducted primarily for the sake 
of profit for the individual promoters, and with very little, 
if any, consideration for the welfare of the public. The 
things that pay best are done, not the things that would be 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 223 

most beneficial to tlie public. For this reason all public 
amusements, and all the means of public recreation, should 
be socialized. The community, which is interested in the 
welfare of its people rather than in profit, should look 
after so vital a matter as public recreation. In the 
average community during the last fifty years, the saloon, 
the club house, and the commercialized dance hall, were the 
only means of rendezvous and of recreation that were open 
to many people. Jane Addams says that it is for the want 
of better places to go to that so many of I^ew York's work- 
ing girls spend their evenings in the commercialized dance 
halls, many of which are directly connected with the 
brothel. Having no homes in which to stay, where else 
shall they go ? Much of the life which the church tries to 
conserve is destroyed in these haunts of Mammon. It 
will continue to be so until we will close up these commer- 
cialized dens and give the people clean and wholesome 
recreation instead. 

There is no longer any doubt that there are many 
individuals who cannot be saved until we regenerate the 
community in which they live. And this phase of her 
christian task the church has shirked. 

But What Can the Church Do ?. — There is room for an 
honest difference of opinion as to the part the church 
should take in the building of a better community. There 
is a difference of opinion even among the socially minded 
Christians as to how far the church should go in her efforts 
to meet specific community needs. Some hold that the 
church does her full duty when she teaches the kingdom- 
principles and ideals and urges her members and the 
citizens of the community to meet the specific social needs ; 
while others have gone so far as to open pool and billiard 
rooms in the parish house and to conduct dances in the 
basement of the sanctuary. 

But no matter how individual Christians may differ in 
their opinion as to the church's duty in meeting certain 



224 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

specific community needs, there are a few fundamental 
duties about which there can hardly be room for a legiti- 
mate difference of opinion. Every social minded person 
will agree that the church should see and understand the 
problems of the community, — its social problems as well 
as its more distinctly religious problems. The church has 
no right to minister in a community whose people she does 
not know, and in whose problems she takes no interest. 
The study and the understanding of her own community 
is fully as religious and far more important than the study 
and the understanding of the Galatian or the Macedonian 
communities of the first century. It is evident that the 
church cannot shed the light of the Gospel upon problems 
she does not see. A vital message demands a chart of the 
community as well as a copy of the Gospels. 

And it is equally clear that the church must endeavor 
to develop a type of Christian individual who will take a 
vital interest in the welfare of the community, — in its 
business, its pleasures, its dwelling houses, its streets, its 
parks, in short in everything that enters into the com- 
munity's life and welfare. In a well organized community 
it may not be necessary for the church, as an institution, 
to engage directly in many community activities. It is 
primarily through her membership, in whom she must create 
the social vision and the social conscience, that she must 
aim to make her social influence felt. The normal relation 
of the church to the social organism is that of the soul 
to the body, rather than that of the boatman to the boat. 
She must help move society in the right direction by an in- 
ner impulsion, rather than by external force. There is a 
parallel, as Professor Mathews has pointed out in one of 
his books, between the function of an educational institu- 
tion and that of the Christian church. An educational 
institution gives instruction and inspiration, but does not 
of itself undertake to do the things in which it gives in- 
struction. In the main, that is the duty of the Christian 
church in her relation to the social up-building of the com- 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 225 

munity. She must inspire and stimulate her people to do 
the things that ought to he done. But this implies the 
developing of a type of Christian individual w^ho differs 
radically from the typical saints of other ages. It 
requires the culture of a Christian individual v^ho adds 
the social passion of the prophet to the piety of the old- 
type church man. 

And, v^hat is more important still, the church must aim 
to create in the community itself the social vision and the 
social conscience. It is not enough that a goodly number 
of individual citizens should have the social conscience; 
the community itself must have it. It is this thing 
especially that we mean when we speak about christian- 
izing the community. Communities are not impersonal 
things, mere aggregations of individuals and buildings, 
but super-persons. The late Professor Eoyce, of Har- 
vard University, in his last great work: ''The Problem 
of Christianity,'^ points out the fact that there are 
two grades, or levels, of mental beings in the world: 
individuals and communities. He says: "A community, 
when unified by an active, indwelling purpose, is 
an entity more concrete and less mysterious than an 
individual man, and can love and be loved like a hus- 
band and wife love." 

Professor Poyce here calls our attention to a fact of 
the utmost importance for the church. Communities are 
personal beings — super-personal beings — in whom the 
Christian conscience must be developed. The commun- 
ity itself, as a super-person, must be filled with the king- 
dom vision, animated by the kingdom ideals, and moved 
by the kingdom purposes. It is the community thus 
christianized that will ultimately solve the problems of 
which we have been speaking. 

But what agency shall inspire the community with the 
kingdom-ideals and purposes if the church will not do 
it ? And how will the church do it if she persists in the 
notion that nothing but an individual person with arms 



226 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

and legs and finger nails lias any personality ? In speak- 
ing to our ministerial association, about two years ago, 
a theological professor ridiculed the idea of christianizing 
an impersonal thing like a community. He claimed that 
nothing can be christianized but an individual person. 
The church, according to his view, must confine herself 
strictly to the individualistic method of christianizing an 
individual here and another there, and by and by these 
christianized individuals will constitute the Christian so- 
cial order. The professor was sincere, but he was 
wrong. A community has a personality that is as 
real, and that is more enduring and important than 
that of any individual citizen. But it is no easy matter 
to arouse, to enlighten, and to direct a great super-per- 
son, like a community. No Gospel will reach its ear and 
change its heart but the social Gospel. And the social 
Gospel will not affect it much unless it is preached and 
practiced by all, the churches of the community. 
Here and there the social efforts of an individ- 
ual congregation, or of a single pastor, may arouse a 
community ; but that is the exception, not the rule. The 
christianizing of our respective communities will require 
the reconversion of the whole church to the social point 
of view of the kingdom of God. 

And, finally, there are occasions when the church, as 
an institution, should undertake certain lines of commun- 
ity service.^ When the community will not do the things 
that ought to be done ; and when no one in the community 
will do them, the church should undertake to do them 
herself . I Here is where the analogy between the function 
of an educational institution and that of the church 
ceases to hold. If, for example, the community will not 
teach its foreign residents the English language and our 
American ideals and standards of life, the churches of the 

^ For a very sane discussion of what the church should do in 
certain backward communities see; Serving the Neighborhood, 
by Ralph A. Felton. 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 227 

eommunity should make an effort to do it. Or if the com- 
miinity will take no interest in the matter of wholesome 
recreation for its young people, the church should, in 
some way, try to meet the need. It might be better for 
the church to gather the young people together in her 
basement and judiciously supervise their dancing than to 
stand idly by until some unscrupulous persons lay hold 
of their social instincts and gather them into some public 
den of iniquity where frequently they are ruined in body 
and soul, while the church throws up her hands in holy 
horror and useless protest. That has been her policy too 
long. She has done very little for the social life of her 
young people. She has done very little to prevent selfish 
men and women from preying and profiteering on the 
social instincts of our youths — very little but scold and 
protest after it was too late to undo what might have been 
avoided. The church need not fear that she will de- 
spiritualize herself by doing anything in the interest of 
human welfare. ^N'or will she thereby depart from the 
will of him who blessed the marriage feast, attended the 
Pharisee's banquet, and enjoyed the air and the sunlight 
on the blue waters of Galilee. 

Ill 

CIIEISTIAKIZUsTG THE NATIOISr 

Christianizing the nation implies more than the re- 
cruiting of the individual citizens for the church, and 
building the country full of churches to which these evan- 
gelized individuals may come to worship God in case 
nothing more interesting claims their attention. If all 
the citizens of the country could be made members of the 
church the country might still not be Christian. There 
was a time when the conversion and baptism of the chief 
ruler of a nation or a province implied the conversion of 
all his subjects. A nominally Christian nation was thus 
born in a day. But such a superficial transaction left 



228 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

the nation as unchristian as it was before. A nation is 
not Christian until its conduct in all its relationships 
squares with the ethical standards of the kingdom of 
God. 

Two Blunders of the Church in her Relation to the 
State. — The church of the past made two serious mis- 
takes in her relation to the state. The first mistake was 
made bj the Catholic church, and the second by the 
Protestant church. 

In her lust for the balance of power the Catholic church 
aimed at the control of the state. Through long periods 
of political gambling, — a gambling more corrupt than any 
that ever disgraced Tammany Hall, — the popes and their 
coadjutors succeeded in usurping the functions of the 
state. They made and unmade kings. But this political 
game was not played with the idea of christianizing the 
state, but for the purpose of empowering the church. 
The result was the degeneration of both the church and 
the state. It led to that political trickery and that moral 
corruption of the church at which many thoughtful people 
revolted. It led to the widespread loss of faith not only 
in the church, but in religion itself. 

In so far as the Catholic church was honest in her de- 
sire to control the state, she was misled by a confusion 
of her sphere and her function. There is an essential 
difference between the sphere of an organism and its func- 
tion. The sphere is the field in which it works, while the 
function is the work which it performs in this given field. 
While the sphere of the church, as an instrument of the 
kingdom of God, is the wide world, it does not follow 
that she should actually operate the affairs of the world. 
The fact that the church has a message for politics, for 
industry, and for science, does not mean that she should 
seize the reins of government, and should operate in- 
dustry, and teach science. The church once lost her soul 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 229 

trying to run the state for her own benefit. She must 
not make that mistake again. 

The second mistake was made by the Protestant church. 
In her reaction from the errors of the Catholic church, 
the evangelical Protestant church swung to the extreme 
opposite position where she left the state blissfully alone. 
The practical consequences of this mistake were almost 
as disastrous for the kingdom of God as were those of 
the Catholic error. It was a sad day in the history of 
Protestant Christianity when the separation of church 
and state resulted in the divorce of God and religion from 
politics. 

In some sections of Europe the Protestant attitude of 
hands off resulted in a speedy reaction in favor of the 
state. The state again became the sovereign power, while 
the Protestant church became a mere dependent. She 
functioned as a tool of the state. The state built the 
churches, and supported the preachers and the theological 
professors ; and, it was only natural that the state, which 
was so gracious to the church, should reserve the right to 
silence any teaching or preaching that was not in strict ac- 
cord with its sovereign will. There is no surprise at all 
at the fact that the state churches of Europe have had so 
little christianizing influence on the nations of which 
they are a part. 

In other sections, the separation of church and state 
resulted in each travelling its own way and attending to 
what was considered its own business. Religion and 
politics were considered two entirely different depart- 
ments of life ; and the church was to attend to the one and 
the state to the other. The sermon on the mount and the 
ten commandments were meant for the church, but not 
for the senate chamber. To ^^love thy neighbor as thy- 
self" was a good thing to preach about in the church, but 
it was a precept that did not concern the state. This 
divorce of religion from politics was detrimental to both 



230 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

the church and the state. The church took good men out 
of the world and unfitted them for political life. The 
pious church man would have nothing to do with politics. 
The more pious the man the less inclined he would be to 
meddle in so corrupt and corrupting a thing as politics. 
The result was that non-church men were left to run the 
state. Or, what was just as bad, since religion and pol- 
itics are two essentially different departments of life and 
must not get mixed up, the church men who entered 
politics left their religion at home with their wives and 
babies. Their theology did not make them see the contra- 
diction between being a good church man on Sundays, 
and a corrupt politician on week days. The corruption 
of politics kept many good people out of political life ; and 
the fact that so many good people remained out of politi- 
cal life still further corrupted politics. 

The first step in the Christianizing of the Nation. — The 
first thing the church must do in her efforts to make the 
nation Christian is to fill her own membership and the 
citizens of her immediate community with a keen sense 
of their political duty and responsibility. Government 
is one of the most fundamental of social disciplines. Un- 
til the millennium comes there will be need of stable gov- 
ernment of some kind. The members of the church must 
be made to feel their duty to a discipline so fundamental 
as government. The church must take just as great pains 
to make her members good citizens of the United States 
of America as she does to make them fit subjects of the 
'New Jerusalem. She must make her members feel that 
politics is just as much a department of kingdom service 
as Bible study or missions. I question whether there is 
any department of our life in this day of social rebuild- 
ing that offers as great an opportunity for kingdom ser- 
vice as political life. The teacher and the preacher may 
lift up the ideals after which we must strive; and they 
may spend their time in private and public agitation for 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 231 

a better world ; but the man who holds public office holds 
the keys that can open or close the doors upon the real- 
ization of our ideals. The man in public office has an op- 
portunity for direct service such as few, if any, of the 
other departments of life offer. The church may spare 
no effort to create a righteous attitude toward so im- 
portant a department of our life. Every public office, 
from the lowest in the city ward to the highest in the gift 
of the nation, exists for the sake of public service. The 
man who seeks public office should be made to feel that 
he must do so out of the Christian desire to serve his 
fellow men just as much as the man who seeks election to 
the pastorate of a Christian congregation. The one office 
is just as sacred as the other; and the church should make 
men feel that such is the case. This, however, means a 
reversal of her former position, for the church has always 
taught that the one kind of work is ^^secular" and the 
other ^'sacred.'^ !N"o wonder that the men who have taken 
the church seriously have made the sacred domain of 
politics secular. 

On the other hand, there is urgent need for a keenei 
public sentiment against the men who seek public office 
for the purpose of self-aggrandisement. Public senti- 
ment should be inspired to brand, as an undesirable citi- 
zen, any man who betrays the sacred trust which his fel- 
low citizens have committed to him by electing him to 
public office. All through the centuries the church made 
all classes of people fear and tremble lest they should 
suffer everlasting punishment if they were not baptized 
or did not belong to church. It would have been of far 
more social consequence if men had been made to fear 
everlasting punishment if, for selfish reasons, they be- 
trayed such a sacred trust as is committed to a man when 
he is elected to public office by his confident fellow citi- 
zens. 

The creation of a new type of conscience, — a political 
conscience that is as keen and as sensitive as the old-type 



232 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

church conscience was, is the first step in the christianiz- 
ing of the nation. Of all our institutions the church is 
the best prepared to render this service. 

The second step in the Christianizing of the Nation.— 
An enlightened people must be given an opportunity for 
self-expression. There must be adequate political ma- 
chinery by means of which the christianized social-will 
can realize itself. Jesus showed the wisdom of the social 
philosopher when he warned us against putting new wine 
into old wine-skins. Old and unyielding institutions are 
apt to be shattered by the ferment of new and expanding 
ideas. It is an extremely risky thing to create an intel- 
ligent social-will without at the same time making ade- 
quate provision for its self-expression. This is the pre- 
dicament in which many communities find themselves to- 
day, especially in Europe, and in certain parts of Asia. 
The masses have become more enlightened, either through 
the progress of popular education, or through contact 
with the world, while the opportunity for self-expres- 
sion or self-government, has been denied them. This is 
one cause for much of the social unrest throughout the 
world. An intelligent social-will will sooner or later de- 
mand a popular form of government. The christianizing 
of the state and the democratizing of its government can- 
not be kept apart. Democracy follows in the path of the 
religion of the kingdom of God as naturally as light fol- 
lows in the path of the sun. 

Democracy, it is true, is a spirit of government rather 
than a form of government. Democracy is a state whose 
fundamental purpose is to give all its citizens equal 
liberty and opportunity. It is a spirit in government 
that aims to give each individual citizen a maximum free- 
dom of activity so long as the exercise of that freedom 
does not interfere with the freedom of others. It is pos- 
sible that this ideal may be realized in a monarchy as 
well as in a state that delegates the governing power to 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 233 

the people. If all absolute monarclis were wise and 
good men, who have the interests of their subjects at 
heart, an absolute monarchy might be preferable to a de 
mocracy. But there can be no guarantee that absolute 
monarchs will always be wise and good men. There is a 
tremendous social risk in delegating so much power into 
the hands of one man, or a few men. The curse of ab- 
solute monarchies is the possibility of the easy betrayal 
of the great social trust that is committed to mere chance 
hereditary rulers and their hireling associates. 

Whatever may be said in favor of this or of that form 
of government, the steady trend of political evolution 
since the English revolution in 1688 and the French 
revolution in 1789, has been away from government by 
a small hereditary class, to some form of popular govern- 
ment. An enlightened people, such as the kingdom of 
God implies, will sooner or later, demand a full voice 
and a free hand in the making and the executing of the 
laws by which they and their interests are governed. 
This right should not, and indeed cannot, be withheld 
from them. The franchise, which is the most common 
medium of political expression, must sooner or later be 
granted to all citizens regardless of sex or color. Wher- 
ever the restricted ballot prevails, such as the denial of 
the right of the franchise to women, or the granting of 
a number of votes to certain classes of citizens as is still 
the custom in some European communities, the social- 
will is clogged. Such a condition will not endure long 
in a community of enlightened citizens such as the king- 
dom of God implies. 

Something more, however, than the universal franchise 
is necessary in order to give the fullest possible expres- 
sion to the enlightened and morally sensitized social-will 
which the christianizing of the nation implies. Under 
the democratic form of government which prevails at the 
present time in the great majority of communities of our 
Union, there is no way of initiating any specific legisla- 



234 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

tion which the citizens of the community may feel to be 
necessary; nor is there any satisfactory way for the leg- 
islators to determine what their home constituency may 
desire of them in any important matters. At the present 
time we have no satisfactory social control over our legis- 
lators. We are still too much at the mercy of the mer 
whom we elect to office. If they are good men, who have 
the wishes and the welfare of the community at heart, 
our interests will be safe in their hands; but if they are 
selfish men, who are in public office for what they can get 
out of it for themselves, it will be bad for the community 
that elected them. A man may have been elected to office 
by the vote of all the citizens, male and female, white and 
black, and yet grossly misrepresent them for the full term 
of his office. The present political machinery does not 
give the people sufficient power over exploiting politicians 
and over corrupt political parties. 

The enlightened social-will demands, in addition to 
tlie universal franchise, something on the principle of 
the initiative, the referendum, and the recall, which have 
made their appearance in a few communities. The ini- 
tiative would give the people the opportunity to originate, 
by vote, certain legislative measures which they may feel 
to be vitally necessary. The referendum would give the 
legislators and their home constituency a direct way of 
determining whether or not certain contemplated matters 
of legislation are desirable. And the recall w^ould give 
the people the power, by vote of the majority, to recall 
from public office before the expiration of his term, any 
man who has betrayed the sacred trust which had been 
commited to him by the community. 

To create a keen social-will and not make adequate 
provision for its full and free self-expression may result 
in the ferment of the new spirit doing violence to the ex- 
isting order of things. 

A Danger not to he Overlooked, — It is quite evident that 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 235 

a form of self-government, sucli as tlie one indicated, 
would be a very troublesome, and indeed dangerous thing, 
in the hands of any but the most enlightened and moral 
citizenship. But the kingdom of God implies the train- 
ing of a citizenship that is capable of the most perfected 
form of self-government. The kingdom of God forbids 
us to stop short of anything but the most perfect type of 
citizenship that can be developed on this earth. A tre- 
mendous task is imposed not only upon the church, but 
upon our system of public education, and upon every de- 
partment of the nation's life. We are still very far from 
the goal of perfect citizenship which is set for us in the 
idea of the kingdom of God. 

In ^'Education and General Welfare," F. K. Sechrist 
states that, in 1900, 8.4% of the total voting population 
of the United States was unable to read or write, while 
in a number of Southern communities as high as 20% 
of the voting population was made up of illiterates. The 
Pennsylvania School Journal, for April, 1921, states that 
one out of every four of the young men who were drafted 
for war-service failed in the simple literacy test. They 
were unable either to read a newspaper or to write a letter 
home. Surveys made recently in certain metropolitan 
communities show that 600 out of every 1000 children 
who enter the first grade drop out of school before the 
eighth grade is reached, while only 14 out of the 1000 get 
to college. Self-government, such as was indicated 
above, and such as the kingdom of God implies, is not 
possible in the hands of illiterates; nor can it become 
efficient in the hands of sixth graders. It may require 
radical reconstruction in our whole social order to give 
every citizen the education that is necessary to make self- 
government safe and efficient. But it is a duty which the 
kingdom of God imposes upon us, and we may not shirk 
it no matter how difficult it may be. 

!N'ot only shall every child be given the privilege of 
the public schools for a certain number of years, but the 



236 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

education tliat we give the child should be adapted to the 
ends of efficient citizenship. Our system of education 
has not concerned itself sufficiently with the training of 
boys and girls for citizenship. So much reading, 
writing, and arithmetic; so much algebra and geometry; 
and the mastery of the physical sciences are very necessary. 
But there are other equally necessary things which have 
been neglected. The mastery of the physical sciences 
should be supplemented by the mastery of the social 
sciences. Men should not only be taught how to master 
nature, but also how to live together. We must bring our 
public schools to that point where they will prepare the 
boys and girls physically, mentally, and morally to take 
their place in a self-governing society. 

The first steps then in the christianizing of the nation 
are the training of a citizenship that is mentally and 
morally capable of self-government, and the perfecting 
of the political machinery that will encourage and facili- 
tate such self-government. The Christian church can be- 
come a potent factor in this social task. The church, 
through the teaching and preaching of the religion of the 
kingdom of God, can do much in the way of creating a 
wholesome public sentiment on social and political ques- 
tions; and this is of fundamental importance. Other 
necessary things will follow as a consequence. Chris- 
tian public sentiment will eventually crystallize into 
just laws. This is the normal way of progress. The 
social preaching of men like Amos, Micah, and Isaiah, 
may have seemed useless to the men who preferred to 
make progress by resort to physical force. But their 
preaching was not in vain. It was the fearless social 
message of these prophets and the public sentiment which 
their preaching helped to create that, in a later generation, 
crystallized into the remarkable set of humanitarian 
laws in Deuteronomy. And the preaching of the social 
Gospel will also help to develop the social-spirited type 
of Christian individual who will be interested in the 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 237 

perfecting of the political macliinery that will facilitate 
the executing of the laws that we have. 

The Supreme Thing in the Christianizing of the 
Nation. — The christianizing of the nation implies some- 
thing more than the creation of a Christian public con- 
science and a sense of civic responsibility in a certain 
number of individual citizens. The conduct of the nation, 
as a Super-Personal Entity, must become Christian. 
Apart from this no nation is Christian. 

In the preceding section attention was called to the 
fact that a well organized community is something more 
than an aggregation of individuals living within certain 
mechanically-drawn boundary lines. In the work pre- 
viously referred to, Professor Royce says: "A highly 
organized community is as truly a human being as you 
and I are individually human. Only a community is 
not what we commonly call a human being, because it 
has no one separately and well knit physical organism 
of its own; and because its mind, if you attribute to it 
any one mind, is therefore not manifested through the 
expressive movements of such a single separate human 
organism- Yet there are reasons for attributing to a 
community a mind of its own. The communities are 
vastly more complex, and, in many ways, are immeasur- 
ably more potent and enduring than are the individuals. 
Their mental life possesses, as Wundt has pointed out, a 
psychology of its ovm, which can be systematically studied. 
Their mental existence is no mere creation of abstract 
thinking or of metaphor, and is no more a topic for mental 
insight, or for phantastic speculation, than is the mental 
existence of an individual man." ^ 

The United States of America, as a highly organized 
community, is something more than the sum of its 
107,000,000 individual citizens living between the Atlan- 
tic and the Pacific Oceans, and between the Gulf of 

1 The Problem of Christianity, I, pp. 164r-167. 



238 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

Mexico and the forty ninth degree of latitude. It is 
something more than the external union of its forty eight 
separate states. It is something more than the historical 
continuity of certain traditions. It is more than a mere 
abstraction of thought, a name for an aggregation of 
separate persons and things. The United States of 
America is a great politico-social personality. The 
United States is a super-person as real as any individual 
person. The tall, lanky figure, with the big, kind eyes, 
the stern brow, and clothed in the ^^stars and stripes," 
represents something as real and as personal as does the 
portrait of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. 
Our ^'Uncle Sam" is a personality as real as any one of his 
107,000,000 citizens. 

Here then are new responsibilities for the church. 
Since a community, or nation, has a mind of its own that 
can be scientifically analyzed and psychologically studied, 
it must also be conceded that it has a will and a con- 
science of its own. We must therefore demand that such a 
super-person pursue a Christian course of life. We must 
insist that such a super-personal being act in conformity 
with the same standard of ethics that we prescribe for 
any individual person.^ Because the church has not been 
in the habit of thinking in terms of social psychology, 
she has failed to apply to super-personal beings such as 
corporations, stock companies, communities, and nations, 
the same standard of ethics that we have been applying 
to individuals. The result has been that while we have 
been living according to one standard of ethics as indi- 
viduals, these super-personal beings have been living ac- 
cording to another standard, or frequently have disre- 
garded all ethics, and have lived like ^'publicans and 
sinners." 

Uor many centuries there has been a quite common 
agreement among all civilized people that certain things 
are wrong for an individual to do; but we have allowed 
these super-persons to do these things without protest. 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 239 

For example, we condemn the individual for coveting his 
neighbor's fields, for lying and the breaking of faith, and 
for stealing. We consider it a most heinous crime for 
an individual to kill another under any conditions save 
in pure self-defense, or in the unquestioned defense of the 
life or the limbs of another. We condemn all forms of 
selfishness in the individual. We declare it wrong for 
any individual to live a self-centered life, regardless of 
the rights and interests of others. And should any indi- 
vidual disregard the ethical judgment of the community 
and arm himself with knives and guns in order to force 
his selfish will upon his neighbors, we would put him 
behind iron bars. But if these things are wrong for 
the individual, then they must also be declared wrong 
for super-individuals such as nations. The church should 
be just as clear and as persistent in her condemnation of 
the shortcomings of nations, including the nation of which 
she is an organic part, as she is in the condemnation of 
the sins of individuals. 

On the other hand, we have recognized certain things 
as right for the individual to do. Certain rules have 
almost universally been recognized as binding for the in- 
dividual, while we have not recognized them as binding 
for super-individuals. To the individual we say: "Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself ; "Do unto others as you 
would have them do unto you'^ ; "Ye who are strong 
should bear the burdens of the weak"; "Be ye merciful 
as your Father in heaven is merciful" ; etc. But if it is 
right that individuals should do these things, then we must 
insist that nations do them too. There is no such thing 
as a double standard of ethics in the kingdom of God: 
one standard for men and another for women : one standard 
for individuals and another for super-individuals. There 
is only one ethical plumb-line, and all conduct, whether 
individual or corporate, must be squared by it. A 
nation is not Christian until it conducts itself in all its 
relationships as a Christian individual conducts himself. 



240 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

How well the nations of the earth measure up to this 
kingdom-requirement is not a pleasant subject for re- 
flection. There is no such thing anywhere as a Christian 
nation, no matter how many of its citizens may belong 
to church, or how many of them may be good Christians 
as individuals. There is not a nation anywhere whose 
life does not revolve around things rather than around 
human welfare. All the nations are still markedly self- 
centered. They are all prejudiced against each other, and 
mutually distrustful of each other; therefore they are 
armed to the teeth, ready to strike the moment that one 
crosses the path that leads to the self-interest of the other. 
Patriotism is still narrow, selfish, and essentially un- 
christian. Patriotism is not animated by the world- 
spirit, but is hedged in between such and such rivers 
and mountains, and such and such degrees of latitude 
and longitude. The more intensely we seem to love our 
own nation, the less inclined we are to love other nations. 
This unchristian nationalism has precipitated war after 
war, and has deluged the world with sufferings, and 
crimes, and horrors. 

The great world-community of the nations is still in 
the uncivilized stage of anarchy. Each one of these great 
super-persons runs loose, while it is armed with murder- 
ous knives and guns; and every now and then there is 
a hold-up on the highways of the world and robbery and 
murder are committed by the wholesale. It is true that 
these super-beings have had some agreements and under- 
standings between themselves. There has been such a 
thing as international diplomacy and arbitration. The 
world-community has had a court at the Hague, which is 
at least the semblance of what we have in every civilized 
community. But this inter-national court has had only 
advisory power, and good advice means nothing to an 
individual vv^ho is selfishly determined to have his own 
way, and who is at the same time prepared to enforce 
his will. There never has been any centralized power, 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 241 

such as we have in every civilized community, to which 
these super-persons are amenable. After two thousand 
years of Christian history the great world-community of 
the nations, the community of the super-individuals, is 
still in the state of barbarism and anarchy. There is no 
such thing as international laws that are binding. Each 
super-individual is a law unto itself. It arms itself suf- 
ficiently either to murder its neighbors, or to defend itself 
against the murderous intentions of its unregenerated 
neighbors. 

The Christianizing of the nation presupposes some such 
organization as w^e have found good and helpful in the 
local community. In the interest of peace and order we 
have taken knives and guns from all individual citizens. 
We have made it unlawful for any individual to arm him- 
self against his neighbors, whether with the peaceful 
intention of a probably necessary self-defense, or with 
the selfish intention of criminal offense. In addition to 
disarming the individual, we have organized the com- 
munity for the purpose of a peaceful and just settlement 
of all misunderstandings; and for the further purpose of 
giving to each individual citizen that freedom which his 
highest self-development demands. If any trouble arises 
between two individuals which they will not or cannot 
adjust between themselves, they can go to an alderman, 
or lawyer, who, as a disinterested third party, will give 
them wise counsel. In all minor matters a just alderman 
or lawyer will urge a peaceful compromise. But if the 
pugTiacious individuals will not compromise, they have 
recourse to the higher courts. It is the duty of the court 
to view the case with the disinterested eye of justice. 
The court, finally, is backed up by the police force, 
which is the community's standing army, and which will 
enforce the decree of the court. 'No civilized com- 
munity will allow its citizens to make war on each 
other. 

This simple organization has worked remarkably well 



242 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

considering the fact that the best of communities are 
made up of only partially regenerated citizens. It would 
be difficult to find any one who would say that it was 
unwise to disarm the individual citizens and to arm the 
community instead. The most ardent champion of 
national preparedness, even if he were a stockholder in 
a munition factory, would hardly venture the opinion 
that it is endangering the life or the freedom of the indi- 
vidual not to allow him to arm himself against his neigh- 
bors. The arming of the community has made the dis- 
armed citizen much safer than his pockets' full of knives 
and guns could have made him in a community of armed 
anarchists. This simple organization of the community 
in the interest of peace and order has meant not only 
peace between individuals, but also the general welfare of 
the individuals. Instead of depriving individuals of their 
liberty, it is the surest way of guaranteeing their liberty. 
Relieved by the community of the burden of a pocket full 
of knives and guns, and also relieved of the constant 
paralyzing fear of attack by his armed and covetous neigh- 
bors, the individual has been left free to develop his man- 
hood and his personality. It has proved itself, by a long 
and almost universal trial, to be a piece of political organ- 
ization that has a very wholesome effect upon the behavior 
of individuals. Instead of having to wait until all indi- 
viduals would be saints before it would be wise and safe 
to adopt universal disarmanent in the local community 
and the arming of the community instead, we have found 
that this method has made some very unsaintly individ- 
uals at least peaceful if not saintly. 

This same method has been adopted by the nations in 
the governing of their provinces or states. Instead of 
each individual province or state arming itself, the nation, 
or the community of states and provinces, arms itself and 
offers its protection to the individual units. This leaves 
the individual state or province free to develop its re- 
sources. It is the only way that the nations have been 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 243 

able to save themselves from perpetual internal warfare 
and possible disruption. 

But this is as far as we have come in the political organ- 
ization of the world for peace, and for the protection and 
encouragement of the weaker nations of the earth. The 
German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, and the French 
free-thinker, Rousseau, were among the first men of the 
modern world to give serious thought to the political 
organization of the world for peace and for the sake of 
the highest self-realization of the nations. In the class 
room of the university we have studied the works of these 
men as examples of philosophic thinking, but outside of 
the class room we have treated their lofty ideals as philo- 
sophic nonsense. 

During the fright which German militarism gave the 
world from 1914 to 1918, politicians and financiers for 
the first time in the history of the world talked seriously 
about the pressing need of a stable league of nations as 
the only safe-guard against militaristic nationalism. 
But no sooner had the temporary fright subsided than the 
characteristic European and American nationalism again 
began to manifest itself. Practically all of President 
Wilson's fine idealism, which he took with him to Ver- 
sailles, quickly vanished before the conventional European 
diplomacy. And it has been curbed still further by sel- 
fish, partisan politics here at home. The shameful gamble 
for the spoils in blood-drenched Europe, and the petty 
dickering of partisan politics here in America, show how 
far the ^^Christian nations'' still are from being Christian. 
But we are thankful for the little that we have gained in 
the way of a closer cooperation between the nations. 
Present failures may become stepping stones to future 
success. President Wilson has gone down to defeat. His 
career is as pathetic as that of King Saul of Israel. But 
the ideals which he championed have not been defeated. 
Crushed to earth they will rise again and will bear fruit 
long after President Wilson will be forgotten. 



244 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

The ultimate goal of political evolution is a League, 
or Federation of the Nations, with a Permanent Inter- 
national Court, which has the three-fold power to make, 
to interpret, and to execute laws that are binding upon 
the individual units that compose it. But that presup- 
poses, as the only ground of its practicability, the disarm- 
ing of the individual units that compose the Federation, 
and the arming of the Federation instead. Nothing short 
of such a stable organization of the world, patterned after 
that which has worked so long and so well in the local 
community, will secure the ultimate ^^peace on earth, good 
will to men,'' which the kingdom of God so clearly im- 
plies. Diplomacy, arbitration, and limitation of arma- 
ments, can, at best, serve only as means or stepping stones 
toward this ultimate goal. 

Such a brotherhood of the nations, — or of the super- 
persons, — is implied in the prophetic conception of the 
kingdom of God; and in the march toward this goal the 
church should lead the way. It may be a far-distant day 
that will see its realization. It will require a great deal 
of patient teaching and preaching. There may be other 
devastating wars before the world's burdens and sorrows 
will demand of our law-makers and politicians the com- 
mon-sense organization that will prevent war, and that 
will encourage peaceful cooperation between the nations. 
Until then each generation of Christians must contribute 
its share to the forward movement to take the nations 
for God. The church, as an instrument of the kingdom 
of God, dare not rest satisfied with the number of indi- 
vidual converts that she may make, the number of churches 
she may erect, and the amount of money she may gather 
for benevolence. Her task is not finished until she has 
done her share in making the nations of the earth as 
saintly and as brotherly as the best Christian indivi- 
dual is. It is a great social challenge that comes to the 
church — one that should arouse all her latent pow- 
ers. 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 245 

IV 



The winning of industry for the kingdom of God must 
be the next adventure of the church. 

Industry has not met the Requirements of the Kingdom. 
— Industry is still essentially a pagan institution. The 
struggle for our daily bread, which occupies the major 
portion of the average man's time, is still under the con- 
trol of the animal impulses, The spirit of industry con- 
tradicts the fundamental purposes of the kingdom of Grod. 
In the kingdom of God everything revolves around men 
and their welfare; while in industry everything revolves 
around things. In the kingdom of God the object is 
service in the interest of life for everybody; while in 
industry the object is profit for a particular class of 
people. The kingdom of God bids us use things in the 
interest of life; while industry sacrifices life in the 
interest of things^ The kingdom of God encourages 
mutual cooperation in the interest of human welfare and 
happiness; while industry practices destructive competi- 
tion for the sake of profit for the strongest. 

In both form and spirit modern industry is autocratic. 
In the world of politics we have been slowly moving 
away from autocracy toward democracy. Absolute mon- 
archies, where all power is vested in one man or in a few 
men, have had their day. The undeniable trend in the 
political world has been toward popular government of 
some kind. In industry, however, we have been moving 
in the opposite direction. In the world of business we 
have been moving toward autocracy, and still more autoc- 
racy. From the simple conditions of a few generations 
ago when men worked with their own simple tools, in 

^ iFbr official corroboration of much of the statistical material 
in this section see: The Final Report of the Commission on 
Industrial Relations, Senate Document 415, 64th Congress. 



246 TTie Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

their own little shops located on their own ground, and 
carried their own goods to market, we have passed into 
a state where the employees, until the quite recent advent 
of the labor union, had as little to say as the political 
subjects of the late Czar of Russia. 

The first step toward industrial autocracy was simple 
partnership in business, — the alliance of two men or of 
half a dozen men and their capital to conduct a certain 
line of business as, for example, a grocery store or a 
carpet shop. Through the united efforts of a few men 
and their capital the business could be conducted more 
efficiently and competition be made more effective than 
through the efforts of one man. The second step was 
what is known as centralization in business. This is a 
state where a few men, through a formidable combination 
of capital and influence, form a monopoly of a certain 
line of industry such as coal, oil, iron, or steel. Com- 
petition, as far as possible, is driven from this particular 
field, thus leaving the public to the mercy of the monopoly. 
The third and most dangerous step in the move toward 
industrial autocracy was what is known as consolidation. 
This is a state where a few men, through immense capital- 
ization and political power, control many different lines 
of industry. The United States Steel Trust, for example, 
capitalized so as to make all rival competition practically 
hopeless, owns and controls more than a score of different 
industries such as steel, iron, copper, zinc, lime, etc., as 
well as transportation lines which carry the raw material 
to the mills and the finished product to the market. The 
Meat Packers, according to the report of Government 
Inspector Frances J. Heney, extended their control not 
only over the beef and pork market of the whole country, 
but also over the hides and leather market, the butter 
market, the egg market, the cheese market, the poultry 
market, the canned fish industry, the canned vegetable 
business, the grain market including the rice market. 
And at the time when the Fedleral Government felt 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 247 

compelled to call a halt to their monopolizing of the food 
supply of the whole country, they were in the act of gain- 
ing control of the great chain stores system. It is dif- 
ficult to conceive of a more dangerous kind of autocracy 
than such a controlling of a country's food supply hy 
a quite small class of citizens for their own personal 
profit. About 80% of the country's business is done 
through these three kinds of capitalistic management. 

In a surprisingly short time after the advent of the 
modern industrial era, a quite small percentage of the 
population, in every country in the world, had gained con- 
trol of practically all the raw material which the good 
God has so bountifully provided for the welfare and hap- 
piness of all His children. These same men, animated 
primarily by the desire for profit and personal power, 
gained control of practically all the tools and the factories, 
the transportation lines and the markets. In every civi- 
lized country in the wide world, a quite small percentage 
of the people own and control practically everything that 
enters into the manufacture and exchange of goods. They 
own and control the material means of the life and the 
happiness of the citizens of the nation.^ 

On the other hand, the majority of citizens have 
become dispossessed of everything that enters into the 
manufacture of goods but their physical or mental 
ability to work. The worker of a few generations ago, 
who owned his own shop and tools, no matter how few 
and simple they were, had something substantial standing 
between him and want. But all that stands between the 
modern wage-earner and want are his health and his 
job. If his health holds out and his job lasts, he and his 
family may fare all right. But both his health and his 
job are uncertain commodities. His health may fail him 
at any time; and his job depends upon whether or not it 

1 In "Dynastic America" pp. 11, 12, Henry H. Klein, names 
one hundred families who own and control most of the wealth, 
the railways and the fourteen great basic industries of America. 



248 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

will pay his employer to give it or to withhold it. Dis- 
possessed of everything but their ability to work, the 
modern wage-earners, until the recent advent of the labor 
union, were wholly at the mercy of their employers. 
The workers had no voice, no hand, no anything, in the 
management of the business. They were in a real sense 
the property of the men who owned the mills and the 
machines. Labor was considered a commodity, which the 
employer bought in the open market for the least cent, 
just as he did raw silk or pig iron. Wages and hours of 
work were not considered as matters of life, but 
as factors in the production and exchange of goods. 
The longer the hours and the lower the wages the more 
profit the employers expected to make on their goods. 
The number of hours, the amount of pay, and the general 
working conditions in and about the shops, were all de- 
termined by those who owned the business. It did not 
seem to occur to the employer, or for that matter to the 
public, that labor is just as vital in the manufacture and 
exchange of goods as are capital and management. 
Under the false and inhuman assumption that labor is 
only a commodity like horse-power, the working men had 
to accept the terms as they were laid down for them by 
their masters, or go elsewhere, where, of course, they knew 
they would find the same conditions. The few rights 
which the workers had learned to appreciate in matters 
of government were denied them in matters of industry. 
So long as the workers bargained singly, whether for an 
increase in wages or for a reduction in the hours of work, 
there was no hope for them. Business was conducted 
for profit, not as a matter of public service; and long 
hours and low wages were supposed to be most conducive 
to profit. That, in most instances, settled the matter. 

This autocratic and unbrotherly spirit in industry was 
the real cause of labor unions. The combination of 
capital, against whose strength and tactics the individual 
bargaining of the workers availed nothing at all, inspired 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 249 

the collective bargaining of labor. As the only conceiv- 
able means of defense or offense against the impregnable 
entrenchments of capital, the workers began to consolidate 
their strength in labor unions. The giant labor, chained 
for five thousand years, has broken his shackles and has 
begun to realize his power. If the different departments 
of labor would consolidate their strength, as capital has 
done, their power would be irresistible. Modern labor 
knows this ; and there are no uncertain signs in many sec- 
tions of the labor world that it may act in accordance with 
the power that it knows it possesses. It is not impossible 
chat the industrial pendulum may swing to the opposite 
extreme and that, for a while at least, we may suffer from 
a new type of industrial autocracy — that of the labor 
union. 

But in our attitude toward organized labor, especially 
because of the defiant and dictatorial spirit which it has 
manifested of late, let us remember that the collective ac- 
tion of labor was preceded, by many years, by the collective 
action of capital. Whatever inconvenience we may suffer, 
and whatever abuse of power on the part of labor that we 
may witness before industrial peace will come, must 
ultimately be charged against capital ; for there would have 
been no labor unions and no labor troubles, if capital, dur- 
ing the years of its uncurbed power, had treated labor with 
brotherly consideration. For many centuries the toilers in 
forest and field and shop were as meek and as submissive 
as their companions of the yoke, the patient oxen. And 
labor thus far, with few exceptions, has been bargaining 
only for a decent living, while capital, in cases too num- 
erous to count, has been bargaining for wanton extrava- 
gance and unpardonable luxuries. There is a difference, 
at a time like this, between labor bargaining for seventy- 
five cents or even a dollar an hour, and capital bargaining 
for 100% profit. 

If capitalistic industry had been organized and con- 
ducted for the purpose of service to the public for a just 



250 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

and reasonable profit to the promoters, we would have no 
fault to find with it. If this had been the case we would 
tolerate its monarchic form and its autocratic spirit in the 
midst of our otherwise democratic state. But the unjust 
distribution of the conjointly produced wealth in every 
community of the civilized world is irrefutable proof that 
the present industrial and financial system has been 
planned and executed for the enrichment of one class of 
people at the expense of others, '^o unbiased student of 
history, who is at all familiar with the facts, would say 
that the conjointly produced wealth of the average com- 
munity has been distributed on the basis of the public 
service that has been rendered, or that an attempt has been 
made to distribute it on such a basis. While there are 
very many business men of the finest and noblest type, — 
men who make their business a means of public service 
with as much sincerity and conscientiousness as any 
preacher of the Gospel, — nevertheless capitalistic business 
as a whole stands condemned before the bar of the world 
as a pagan institution that places its own profit above 
every other consideration. And while we have all been 
the victims of its greed, no other class of citizens has 
suffered so much injustice and indignity at its hands as the 
class of manual laborers. From the days of chattel slav- 
ery and feudal serfdom on down to the present day of 
capitalistic autocracy, they have been systematically denied 
not only their rightful share of the wealth which they have 
helped to create, but frequently also the divine right to 
their limbs, their life, and the pursuit of happiness. 

Industry Has Failed to Render Justice in the Distribu- 
tion of the Wealth of the Community. — ''In 1900,'' 
according to figures published by Professor Henry C. 
Vedder, of Orozer Theological Seminary,^ ''nine-tenths of 
one per cent, of the population of the United States owned 
70.5% of the wealth; 29% owned 25.2% of the wealth; 

^ See: Socialism and the Ethics of Jesus, p. 240. 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 251 

while 70.1% of the people owned 4.2% of the wealth." 
The nine-tenth of one per cent, of the people who owned 
TO. 5% of the wealth, represented the lords of industry 
and finance. The YO.1% of the people who owned 4.2% 
of the wealth, represented the great host of wage-earners, 
many small business men, and the small salaried people. 
The 29% of the people who owned 25.2% of the wealth, 
represented the better salaried people and the ordinary 
business men. Stated more concretely. Professor Yedder's 
figures show that, in 1900, when capitalism was at the 
height of its autocratic power, 900,000 people at one 
end of society owned more of the country's wealth than 
70,000,000 at the other end. This tells a sad tale of 
criminal injustice and brutal wrong somewhere along the 
line. As Professor Rauschenbusch has said: ^'Some one 
has stolen and somebody has been robbed." 

Since 1900, wealth has increased in the United States 
by leaps and bounds. And while concentration is not as 
acute as it was twenty years ago, the general public has 
by no means profited in proportion to the general increase 
in wealth. Professor W. I. King, of the University of 
Wisconsin, says that 2% of the people still own consider- 
ably more property than all the other citizens together. 
The slight relief from the acute concentration is due to 
the wider distribution of income through the increase in 
wages since 1900. But the increase of wages has not been 
sufficient to relieve the situation very much. King says 
the average adult wage for 1912 was only $549. 
Professor Harry F. Ward, of the Union Theological 
Seminary, 'New York City, says that 10,000,000 adult 
wage-earners in the United States earned only $500 in 
1914, and that nine-tenths of all the female wage-earners 
east of the Rocky Mountains and north of the Mason and 
Dixon line earned less than $500 in that same year. The 
report of the United States Commission on Industrial 
Relations for 1915 states that in only a few highly paid 
occupations did the income of working men range from 



252 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

$1500 to $2000 a year. From two-thirds to three-fourths 
of the adult males in industrial occupations earned only 
$15 a week, and females only $8, in 1915. At that rate 
the concentration will not he relieved very rapidly. 

Since 1915 wages have heen considerably increased, hut 
so also have living expenses. Because of the decrease in 
the purchasing value of the dollar the average man has 
been just as poor since 1915 as he was before. Wherever 
a reliable study was made over an extended area of the 
ratio between the increase in wages and the increase in 
living expenses from 1914 to 1918 it was found that living 
expenses had increased more than wages. In the state of 
Massachusetts, for example, living expenses increased 
8Y% from 1914 to 1918, while wages, including all classes 
of wage-earners, increased only 53%. In most comunities 
the gap between the increase in wages and living expenses 
was not as great as that. But there are few communities 
where the increase in wages of the average man equalled 
or exceeded the increase in living expenses. In 37 differ- 
ent occupations investigated by Messrs. Hannah and 
Lauck the average advance in wages was 42%, while the 
cost of living had increased about 70%. Since 1918 
prices have been dropping, but the average income of 
working people, through the reduction of wages and part- 
time work, has dropped more than prices. 

There are few important things at the present time that 
are more commonly misunderstood than the income of the 
average man. Because in certain trades wages are good, 
we are too apt to infer that all wage-earners are well paid. 
But such is not the case. The wages of the great host of 
unorganized laborers, teamsters, clerks, etc., have not been 
increased in the same proportion as the wages of such 
highly organized workers as carpenters, bricklayers, 
machinists, plumbers, and the railroad trainmen. And, 
furthermore, it is unsafe to infer that the carpenter's or 
the bricklayer's anual income is $2400 because he gets a 
dollar an hour. There is a difference between hypotheti- 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 253 

cal wages and actual wages. The Manly Commission has 
reported that the average wage-earner loses from one-sixth 
to one-fifth of the w^orking days of the year. A thunder 
storm may deduct 50^, and the grippe, or a delay in the 
shipment of some building material, may deduct $50 from 
his pay. The working man's family does not live on what 
the head of the family would earn if he worked every 
working hour of every working day of the year, but on so 
much an hour times the actual number of hours that he 
works. 

During the month of July, 1921, according to the statis- 
tics of the United States Bureau of Labor, the average 
earnings of steel and iron workers were $76.99; of auto- 
mobile workers $132.48 ; of car builders and repairers 
$118.66; of cotton workers $67.56; of woolen workers 
$90.08 ; of silk workers $85.18 ; of men's clothing workers 
$125.40; of shoe workers $89.72. These are average 
trades, and the month of July was an average month. 
These figures are therefore fairly representative of indus- 
trial wages for the first six months of 1921. In the indus- 
tries of Pennsylvania the average wage for the year 1920 
was $1223.33. In the unorganized trades wages, during 
this same time, were considerably lower. 

A very serious matter for the average man is the peri- 
odic recurrence of industrial depressions and panics which 
consume what little capital he has been able to accumulate 
during more prosperous times. A recent study of the 
history of panics by two eminent political economists 
shows that our country has been visited by a serious indus- 
trial depression or an actual panic every six and a half 
years for the last one hundred and seven years. There 
were financial depressions or panics in 1814, '18, '26, '29, 
'37, '48, '57, '64, '73, '84, '93, '97; in 1903, '07, '13, and 
'21. During these depressions many small business men 
are forced into bankruptcy, while the small accumulations 
of the average working man become exhausted. A few 
more months of unemployment will exhaust the small 



254 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

accumulations which the most provident working men 
saved on their wages during the last three or four pros- 
perous years. With grim regularity the few fat years 
have been consumed by a few lean years ever since the 
capitalistic system shed its milk teeth in 1812. 

But many people believe that the manual laborer is 
getting all that his labor actually adds to the value of the 
raw material. Any one who knows the present day work- 
ing people knows that many a wage-earner not only gets 
all that he earns, but a great deal more than he earns. 
There are many working men who are clamoring loudly 
for $10 a day pay for 50^ worth of labor. Sabotage is 
a very common crime of labor, especially in the highly 
organized trades where the dishonest workman gets equal 
protection with the honest one. There are too many work- 
ing men who take no interest at all in their work. The 
honest employer who must deal with this kind of employee 
has my sincere sympathy. It is a pity that dishonest and 
unscrupulous labor spoils the good reputation of the great 
host of honorable American and English working men. 
But we must not allow this to prejudice us against the 
wage-earners as a class. That the wage earning class is 
getting all that it earns, or that the average laborer gets all 
that his labor adds to the value of the raw material, is not 
true. Professor Ward, who made a careful study of this 
matter, over an extended area, says that '^the average wage 
in 1914, in the manufacturing plants of the country was 
$6Y0 per capita. The value of the finished product per 
capita was $3000. After allowing a liberal estimate for 
the value of the raw material and all over-head expenses, 
it appeared that the workers, including the managers, 
received only about 40% of what had been added to the 
value of the raw material. The rest was profit claimed 
as the earnings of capital. '^ -*- Can any reasonable man 
feel that 40% as wages, including the big salaries of the 
superintendents and managers, and the balance as the re- 

^ The Gospel for a Working World, p. 91. 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 255 

ward of capital, is a just distribution of the joint earnings 
of industry? Can we hope for an abatement of the un- 
rest that is shaking the industrial world to its foundations, 
so long as no constructive efforts are made to bring about 
a more equitable distribution of the good things to the 
creation of which we all contribute our share ? 

It is evident from the latest available figures that no 
serious efforts have been made since 1914 to bring about 
a more equitable distribution of the joint earnings of in- 
dustry. According to the statistics compiled by the 
department of Internal Affairs for the year 1920, the 
average wage earner in Pennsylvania earned five times 
as much as his wages amounted to. According to these 
fig-ures the average annual wage in Pennsylvania for 1920 
was $1223.33, while the production of each averaged about 
$5810. Surely the principles of the kingdom of God are 
still being violated in the industries of Pennsylvania. 

The president of one of our great steel corporations, in 
an address before the Allentown Chamber of Commerce, 
a few years ago, compared big business to a three-legged 
stool, capital, labor, and transportation, forming the re- 
spective legs without which the stool cannot stand. The 
conclusion was that each of these three contributing parties 
should receive an equal share of the joint earnings of the 
business. It would be a fair conclusion to draw if it were 
true, as the analogy of the three-legged stool assumed, that 
the few capitalists who own the mills actually added as 
much to the value of the finished product as the 10,000 
working people. But the premise is not true, and the 
world can no longer be deceived by this kind of worn out 
fallacy. The argument that capital should receive as 
much as labor in a great concern like a steel mill is fun- 
damentally wrong. In the kingdom of God we dare not 
tolerate an injustice as gross as that which attempts to 
give to a few capitalists as much as a whole community 
gets. Any scheme of distribution that fails to give to the 
various contributing parties the equivalent of what they 



256 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

actually contribute is unjust, and cannot be approved of 
in the kingdom of God. The present system of industry 
has made no effort at a just distribution of the wealth that 
has been created. Business, as a rule, keeps as much as 
it can for itself, and gives as little as it must for its help 
and for the patronage of the public. 

The income tax receipts are a new source of proof of 
the fact that the present industrial and financial system 
is not inspired by the principle of justice in the 
distribution of the wealth of the community. In 1916, 
for example, 2,900 individuals reported incomes rang- 
ing from $100,000 to $150,000; 1,284 individuals from 
$150,000 to $200,000; 726 individuals from $200,000 
to $250,000; 427 individuals from $250,000 to 
$300,000; 469 individuals from $300,000 to $400,000; 
425 individuals from $400,000 to $500,000; 376 in- 
dividuals from $500,000 to $1,000,000; 97 individuals 
from $1,000,000 to $1,500,000; 42 individuals from 
$1,500,000 to $2,000,000; 34 individuals from $2,-^ 
000,000 to $3,000,000; 14 individuals from $3,000,000 
to $4,000,000; 9 individuals from $4,000,000 to $5,- 
000,000 ; and 10 individuals over $5,000,000 each. The 
incomes of the twenty-six highest individuals aggregated 
$170,000,000. 

The total income of all the citizens of the United States 
for 1917 was about $38,250,000,000. There were 437,- 
000 individuals in 1916, whose incomes for that year 
aggregated $6,300,000,000. Allowing for 70,000 single 
men and women among these 437,000 individuals, and 
reckoning a wife and three children for the rest, it would 
appear that about 2,000,000 individuals had one-fifth as 
much actual income as the other 100,000,000 citizens. A 
thing that is worthy of special notice is that there were 
very few from the great host of 25,000,000 manual labor- 
ers who reported incomes of $3000 on their wages 
alone. Another thing that deserves serious consideration 
is that 8,000 more millionaires were reported in 1916 than 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 257 

in 1915. Surely these men of enormous incomes are not 
keeping for themselves only what they are worth to society, 
and a great many others are not getting all that they are 
worth. Somebody is still stealing, and somebody is still 
being robbed. Here is the chief cause of the widespread 
social unrest of our day. And the unrest will not abate 
until the cause for it will be removed. 

Industry Has Been Subordinating the Life of the 
Workers to Its Own Profit. — In addition to the unjust 
distribution of the conjointly produced wealth of the com- 
munity, the manual laborers, as a class, have been deprived 
of the full opportunity to live which belongs to man by 
divine right. For several thousand years, from the days 
of Greece and Eome, and all through the period of feudal 
serfdom, down to modern Russia, they were frequently 
denied the protection of the law, the privilege of educa- 
tion, and other inalienable rights of human beings. 
Ethics, religion, and public sentiment acquiesced in the 
opinion that the masses were born to toil that the classes 
might live without toil. It is only of quite recent date 
that there has been anything like just and humane labor 
legislation in any country in the world. And so far as I 
have been able to discover, the party that has had the con- 
trol of industry, from the days of the. feudal landlord to the 
days of the capitalistic autocrat, opposed those legislative 
measures that sought to place the life and the welfare of 
the workers above the proj&t of the employers. It was as 
late as 1842 that the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury suc- 
ceeded in having a law placed on the statute books 
forbidding the employment of women, and of children 
under thirteen years of age, in the coal mines of 
England. And it was not until 1847 that he succeeded in 
having his famous Factory Act passed prohibiting children 
under twelve years of age from working over ten hours in 
England's unsanitary factories. It required fourteen 
years of incessant labor for Shaftesbury to accomplish 



258 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

this. He was opposed by every vested interest in Eng- 
land, including the vested church. Shaftesbury's experi- 
ence in England was not at all exceptional. Humane 
labor legislation has had to fight its way against the oppo- 
sition of the moneyed powers in every age and in every 
country. 

Even to-day the life of the manual laborer, in the best 
countries in the world, is unnecessarily jeopardized, and 
the conditions of labor are unnecessarily hard. Industrial 
accidents and ocupational diseases form one of the darkest 
chapters in human history. The death list of American 
industry, for the last twenty-five years, has averaged more 
than 25,000 a year. The number of accidents have aver- 
aged from 500,000 to more than 1,000,000 a year. Dur- 
ing the last twenty-five years industry sacrificed more of 
our citizens than were sacrificed in any war in which our 
country was ever engaged. Eor the -^yq year period, end- 
ing December 31, 1917, the casualty list of our American 
railroads alone was 980,565. Of this number 48,801 were 
deaths, and 931,764 were injuries. Each line of industry 
adds its grim toll to the list. Every ton of coal that is 
mined, and every great steel frame that is raised to the 
sky, has the blood of some workman upon it. The suffer- 
ings and deaths due to occupational disease form a longer 
and even darker chapter in the tragedy of human life than 
industrial accidents. In a number of our industries the 
foreign workmen are used up in six years, while in some 
industries they last on an average only four years. And 
yet they are human beings. In our prayer meetings we 
call them brothers, and in our mills we grind them up as 
fodder. 

We used to be told that since men must work accidents 
must happen, and we believed it; but we have come to 
know that this is only partly true. Expert investigators, 
in this country and in Europe, tell us that fully half of 
all the deaths and serious accidents could be prevented, 
and that occupational disease could be reduced to a mini- 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 259 

mum, if we would cease to place somebody's profit above 
somebody else's life. Wherever adequate precautionary 
measures have been adopted the number of accidents, and 
the amount of occupational disease, have been greatly re- 
duced. The number of industrial accidents, and the prev- 
alence of occupational disease, in a number of European 
countries where precautionary measures have been adopted 
and carried out, are far below the average here in the 
United States. Here in the United States, for example, 
one man out of every ten who have worked in the lead 
industry for ten years or longer suffers from lead-poison- 
ing, while in England only one out of every eighty-nine 
is afflicted with this dreadful disease. In Germany the 
number of those affected is still smaller. The difference 
is due to England's and Germany's greater precaution in 
this dangerous business. How many American working 
men have sacrificed their lives, and how much suffering 
it has brought to their families, to put the fine polish on 
our automobiles only God in heaven knows ! Some Euro- 
pean countries prefer a dull finish on their automobiles to 
the prevalence of lead poisoning among their working 
people. Until recently the phosphorous poisoning in our 
match factories was as common and as deadly as the lead 
poisoning in our dye works and in our automobile plants. 
American industry is still sacrificing the life and the 
health of the workers in the interest of profit, a practice 
against which the kingdom of God bids us to speak plainly 
and fearlessly. 

And not only is industry sacrificing life and health 
unnecessarily, but it is also denying a great host 
of men and women the leisure and the freedom from 
incessant toil and anxiety which real living demands. 
Long days and endless weeks in noisy mills and dusty 
factories are still quenching the divine fire in multitudes 
of men and women. The men who are compelled to work 
in some dingy factory for ten or twelve hours a day, for 
six or seven days of the week, and for just enough remun- 



260 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

eration to secure a mmimum of cheap food, cheap clothing, 
and cheap shelter for themselves and families, are denied 
the chance to live and to grow,— a right which the king- 
dom of God implies for everybody. 

In 1910 there were still ^yq great industries that were 
regularly working from 5Y% to 95% of their employees 
72 hours a week. In that same year there were thirteeri 
industries that regularly worked from 23% to 96% of 
their men 60 or more hours a week. The report of the 
Inter-Church Commission on the steel strike states that 
approximately one-half of the employees in the iron and 
steel manufacturing plants of the country are subjected to 
the schedule known as the twelve hour shift, which means 
an eleven to fourteen hour day. In the Youngstown steel 
and tube plants, where the investigation was less handi- 
capped than it was in the Pittsburgh district, it was found 
that 10% of the employees were on the 8 hour schedule, 
35% on the 10 hour, and 55% on the 12 hour schedule. 
It was also discovered that there has been a tendency, 
especially in the Gary plants, to increase rather than to 
decrease the long shifts. How many clerks in grocery 
stores and in drug stores, how many teamsters and how 
many kitchen and restaurant helps, are regularly working 
from 60 to 75 hours a week no one knows. In 1917, there 
were at least 1,500,000 men and women who were regu- 
larly working seven days or nights a week. All such are 
missing the privileges and blessings of real living. 

The length of the working day or of the working week 
is only secondarily a matter of production. It is pri- 
marily a matter of life. The working day and week must 
not be made as long as the biggest profit seems to demand, 
but as short as is commensurate with adequate production. 
We have learned that it is not necessary to tie men and 
women and children to the wheels of industry for ten or 
twelve hours a day, and often for seven days a week, in 
order that the race may live. With the present scientific 
control of nature, an 8 hour day in the majority of in- 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 261 

dustries, and a 6 hour day in sncli industries as the min- 
ing of coal, would be sufficient to produce enough for the 
race to live at its best. The shorter day would be one 
way of preventing the periodic over-production in certain 
lines of industry, w^hich is one of the chief causes of un- 
employment. It would also greatly reduce the number of 
industrial accidents. Most accidents occur after the point 
of fatigue has been reached, w^hich naturally occurs more 
regularly in the 10 or 12 hour day than it does in the 8 
hour day. And it would give the w^orking class a chance 
to live and to grow, a right that has too frequently been 
denied them. 

It is true that the leisure derived by the sudden and 
universal adoption of the shorter working day and week 
might, if we would do nothing to prevent it, create as 
many social problems as it would remedy. It was pointed 
out in another connection that more people go wrong dur- 
ing the hours of leisure than at any other time. Dr. 
Martin G. Brumbaugh, ex-governor of Pennsylvania, 
prophesied recently that within twenty-five years we would 
have to be more concerned about legislation to regulate 
our leisure than about legislation to regulate our work. 
That prophecy may come true if we will do as little during 
the next twenty-five years as we did heretofore to safe- 
guard our leisure. The kingdom of God imposes solemn 
duties upon us in this matter. Leisure is not the cause of 
wrong doing, but only the occasion for it. The kingdom 
of God urges us to remove, as far as possible, the occasions 
for wrong-doing during the hours of leisure, and also the 
duty of training citizens who are wise enough and moral 
enough to use their leisure as decent men ought to use it. 
I have no special fears that the working class would not 
use the leisure derived from the 8 hour day, and the 5^ 
day week, to as good advantage as any other class has used 
its leisure. The first use that the Printers' Union made 
of the 8 hour day was the establishing of a correspondence 
school in the artistic aspects of their craft. The moral 



262 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

and social program which the !New British Labor Party 
has in mind for the leisure hours of British working men 
is as Christian as any program that the churches of 
Great Britain have put before their people in many a year. 

A particularly bad feature of the present system of 
industry is that the stockholders or promoters, in too many 
cases, are far removed in distance from the scenes of labor, 
and often still farther removed in experience and sympathy 
with the conditions of labor. They may know nothing of 
the wages that are paid, or of the hours of work, or of the 
conditions in the mills and in the community about the 
mills., The business, in too many cases, is managed by 
hired experts who are well paid for their ability to produce 
profit, and whose desire to please their employers and to 
hold their fat jobs, frequently makes them hard task mas- 
ters. All that the stockholders know of the business,in too 
many instances, is the amount of profit on their invest- 
ment. The bigger the profits the more pleased are the 
stockholders. But bigger profits, and more luxuries and 
extravagance for them and their families, too often mean 
correspondingly more sweat and blood for the workers 
and their families. About 80% of all the funds invested 
m our American industries come from absentee stock- 
holders, who have no vital interest in the workers or in 
the community about the v/orks — no vital interest in any- 
thing but the interest on their investment. 

The proposition of Mr. H. G. Wells, the noted English 
war-correspondent and historian, might be a good one if 
it could be carried out. He suggests the adoption of the 
same method of conscription in industry that some coun- 
tries employ in military affairs. He advocates the con- 
scripting of every able-bodied youth, regardless of his 
social pedigree, for a stated period of service in some 
industry. That would give everybody a taste of real 
work. It would create sympathy for the working 
man, who is a human being like ourselves. If the 
soft-handed rich and their hireling supporters, who 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 263 

have never slied an honest drop of sweat in their 
life, would be obliged to dig coal under the ground, or 
stand beside the molten metal in a blast furnace, for eight 
hours a day and for six days a week, for seventy cents 
an hour, every one of them would become an ardent 
unionist within six months, and they would be among the 
first to vote for a strike for a six hour day, a five and 
a half day week, and $1 an hour pay. And many of 
the fond papas and mammas, who are now indifferent to 
the bad working conditions in and about many of our 
mills and factories, would become very much concerned 
if they knew that their own dear boy and girl w^ould 
have to spend three or four years in these same mills. 
Hours of work, wages, and the general conditions of labor, 
are human problems. They must be considered as factors 
in the culture of life, and not merel}^ as factors in the 
production and exchange of goods. 

It was against the economic and social injustice of 
their day that the prophets of the seventh and the eighth 
centuries B. C. hurled their thunderbolts. The most 
censurable thing in the history of the Christian church is 
that her mouth became muzzled on these identical wrongs 
in her day. The Christian church has been belittling 
her real mission by condemning minor offenses, and at- 
tending to petty duties, while she has been blind to such 
monstrous evils as the grinding up of the poor and the 
helpless in the interest of the swollen fortunes and the 
shameful extravagance of the rich. It surely is straining 
at gnats and swallowing the camel to whine over the evils 
of the modern block dance and Sunday band concerts, 
while we take it as a mere matter of course that 2% of 
the people own and control 65% of all the wealth of the 
country; or that one-fourth of all the families in the 
country are compelled to exist on less than the minimum 
requirement for efficient and happy living, while one- 
twentieth of the families are reveling in extravagance and 
excess. Until we have removed this great beam from 



264 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

the eye of our civilization it is almost an indication of 
imbecility to be picking at the splinters. 

Industry has been Suhordinaiing the Welfare of the 
Community to its Own Profit. — The present system of 
industry, whose God is Mammon, has brought about con- 
ditions not only among the industrial laborers, but in the 
community at large, to which the church dare not be 
indifferent. The business of the church is to build up the 
life of the people, and she may not be indifferent to 
anything that breaks down or destroys life. That the 
commercial spirit which animates the present system has 
been destroying human life in the interest of profit is 
clear. The records of the examining boards during the 
world war assured the nations that Mammon worship- 
ping industry has been using up the people. Amazing 
numbers of men in every country of the belligerents failed 
to meet the physical and mental requirements of the 
army and navy. There were, of course, many contribut- 
ing causes for this failure. But whatever other contribut- 
ing causes there were, the number of the ineligibles invari- 
ably rose or fell with hard or good conditions of labor. 
It was this discovery of industry's direct effect on the 
man-power of the nation that suddenly interested certain 
governments in such hitherto uninteresting matters as 
living wages, hours of work, the length of the working 
week, and the matter of air and sunlight in mills and 
factories. And we also know, with certainty, that the 
number of physically defective and mentally backward 
children invariably increases or decreases with bad or 
good conditions of labor. There is sufficient proof that 
the capitalistic system, which has been lauded as an in- 
dispensable and gracious factor in the up-building of the 
nation, is really a most insidious foe, because it has been 
consuming the very life-blood of the nation in the interest 
of its own profits. 

Social psychology has proved that, as a rule, the moral 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 265 

as well as the mental healtli of the individual and of 
society itself depends upon the height of the physical 
mercury in the human barometer. There is no longer 
any doubt about this. Our system of industry, which 
places profit above life, has created physical, moral, and 
social conditions in the average industrial community 
which make it exceedingly difficult, if not altogether 
impossible, for many people to be Christian. It is hard 
for a man to live an efficient Christian life while com- 
pelled to bring up a family on $3 a day, when two rooms 
on the third floor of a single dwelling house rent for 
$35 a month, and when a pair of overalls costs $2. Moral 
and aesthetic ideals do not appeal to men when their 
stomachs are empty and their toes are bare. John Wesley 
was right when he said: ^'You cannot convert a man as 
long as his feet are cold." And it is just as difficult a 
matter, on the other hand, for a man to retain a soul that 
is sensitive to the higher and finer ideals of life when 
every sense is clogged with the luxuries and superfluities 
of life. It is hard for a man to be brotherly and merciful 
to his neighbors when his whole business life is consumed 
in efforts to beat his competitors in the game, and to 
control prices and domineer markets. The man who is 
moved by the passion to control things, will naturally 
assume the same domineering attitude toward his fellow 
men. It could hardly be otherwise. And it is still 
harder for his children, who are reared in luxury and 
extravagance, and whose only occupation is to fill the 
hours of the days and nights with sport and frivolity, to 
be influenced by the simple, unselfish, sympathetic spirit 
of the kingdom of God. Our Christian communities are 
divided into classes of people who cannot enter into each 
others' lives, — who cannot understand each other, — who 
cannot sympathize with each other, for they live in dif- 
ferent worlds, — worlds that have nothing in common. 
Great multitudes of people, poor people and rich people, 
ignorant people and learned people, men, women, and 



266 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

children, have become the victims of an unchristian 
industrial system which, like a huge octopus, has put its 
horrid tentacles around them and has been sucking the 
warm life-blood from their bodies and quenching the 
divine fire in their souls. 

It is in the extremes of society, which are to no small 
extent the product of the spirit and methods of our profit- 
controlled system of industry, that many of the worst 
sins that we have to contend with are bred. Among the 
enervated poor at the one end of society^ and among the 
profligate rich at the other end, we find the worst forms of 
licentiousness — drunkenness, sexual excess, and unmiti- 
gated animalism. It is nerves that are drained by over- 
work and anxiety, or nerves that are surfeited with idle- 
ness and dissipation, that react most readily to temptation. 
Our system of industry, whose unpardonable sin is that it 
places profit above life, has helped to create the lairs that 
breed many of our contagious and infectious diseases. 
Tuberculosis, which destroys thousands of our people 
each year, is essentially an occupational disease. It 
has its perpetual quarters among the under-nourished, 
hard-worked, and poorly housed mill workers, from whence 
it stalks everywhere and consumes and kills. The per- 
centage of tubercular victims is anywhere from 10% to 
38% higher in the densely populated mill districts of our 
industrial centers than it is in the better residential 
sections. 

It is difiicult in all cases, and in many cases impossible, 
to make • Christians of the people who live in the polar 
extremes of society. The agitation for a more equitable 
distribution of the community's wealth is not prompted 
by covetousness, but by the passion for social salvation. 
To be good and useful citizens many of our people need 
more of the good things of this life than they now have, 
and others less. There is an economic reason for the 
physical, mental, and moral superiority of that ''once 
splendid middle class." To help increase this class which 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 267 

has neither too little nor too much, instead of standing 
idly by while our system of industry is wiping it out, 
is one of the social duties of the church. The matter of 
saving individuals requires an economic leveling of 
society. E'ot only must the crooked ways of industry 
be made straight, but the mountains of millionairism 
must be leveled down, and the valleys of want must be 
filled up. 

What can the Church do.— The christianizing of in- 
dustry is the most important as well as the most difficult 
task before the church and the world to-day. The solu- 
tion of many other problems will depend upon the solu- 
tion of this one. There is no other discipline that touches 
life at so many points, and that so vitally affects so many 
individuals as industry. It reacts upon every individual 
from the oldest to the youngest, and upon every de- 
partment of life from the counting-house to the prayer- 
meeting. It touches the fundamental needs of every 
individual, of every home, of every congregation, and of 
every interest in the community. Until industry will 
become christianized there will be many individuals who 
cannot be christianized, and there will be whole depart- 
ments of our life that will remain pagan. 

And, very naturally, the world is looking to the Chris- 
tian church for a contribution to the solution of this 
problem. The thinking world will not pardon the 
church for spending her time holding prayer-meetings 
and collecting benevolent funds while she remains 
indifferenfj to the greatest and most difficult of all 
our problems. The church must include industry with- 
in the scope of her redemptive purpose. The prin- 
ciples of the kingdom of God must be made standard and 
binding for the men in business as well as for the men in 
the Christian ministry. Business men must do business 
as well as preachers must preach the Gospel for the sake 
of service. The church must spare no efforts to create 



268 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

a business conscience tiiat is as Cliristian as our churcli 
conscience. The church must insist that to be a Chris- 
tian a man must be as square before the counter of his 
place of business as he is before the altar of his church. 

The principles of the kingdom must, first of all, be 
applied to the making of money. The church has always 
had a good deal to say as to how people should spend their 
money, but she has not been sufficiently concerned about 
the way people make their money. If a man has given 
liberally to the church and to charity, the church has 
praised him without concerning herself very much about 
the principles or the methods by which the money was 
made. If a man has given $100,000 to missions, or to 
a charitable or an educational institution, the church has 
given him an LL. D. and honored him with a place on 
the Board of Trustees of half a dozen institutions, al- 
though the $100,000 for benevolence may have come from 
a $1,000,000 which the fellow withheld from his em- 
ployees and extracted from the helpless public. The 
charitable way in which a man has spent a little of his 
money has been made to atone for the dishonest and oft- 
times inhuman way in which he made it. 

During the recent church-wide agitation of stewardship 
in connection with the preparation for the financial drive 
of the Forward Movement of the churches, too little was 
said about righteousness in the making of money. The 
standard text book on stewardship: ^'Money the Acid 
Test," which was studied in the majority of the congrega- 
tions of thirty denominations, slights the most important 
part of stewardship. The emphasis which the author 
places upon the divine requirements in the giving and 
the spending of money so completely overshadows the 
references to the divine will in the making of money that 
the average reader will fail to see that God is very much 
concerned about how we make our money, 'provided we 
give enough of it to the church. If a man gives a tenth or 
more of his income to the church, she, of course, hesitates 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 269 

to say mucli about such secondary matters as the payment 
of unjust wages, or the watering of stock, or profiteer- 
ing in food and rent. The type of stewardship that 
stresses only the lesser half of the matter will not be much 
of a factor in the christianizing of industr}^ ^N'ot until 
we come to appreciate that honesty and brotherliness in 
the making of money is a more important thing from the 
point of view of the kingdom of God than liberality in the 
giving of money, will our agitation of stewardship become 
a vital factor in the christianizing of industry. 

The church should also encourage and assist all legiti- 
mate efforts to ameliorate the hard conditions that prevail 
under the present system. She should encourage all 
efforts to bring about necessary changes, and to remove 
abuses, in the present system. Although it is getting late 
in the day to begin, the church should use her influence to 
bring the two contending factors in the industrial conflict 
into a more fraternal relationship, and into a better under- 
standing of one another and of the real issues involved. 
Perhaps the worst can still be avoided. Colonel David 
Carnegie, M. P., England, a man who understands the 
church, and capital and labor, as well as any man in 
Europe or America does, feels that it is still possible to 
bridge the chasm between the contending factions. He 
feels that certain readjustments can be made that will be 
permanently satisfactory to all parties concerned. He 
sees great promise in The Industrial Councils' Plan in 
Great Britain.^ I hope he is right. I hope it is possible 
to poultice the present system so as to relieve the acute 
irritation. Perhaps the present system can be christian- 
ized. We may spare no efforts to christianize it. Hitherto 
we have not tried to do it. 

Christianizing Industry May Require a Change of 
System^ — I confess my personal fears that industry, as it 

1 See: Can the Church and Industry Unite? by Carnegie. 
See also: The Report of the Whitley Committee. 



270 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

is constituted at tlie present time, cannot be cliristianized. 
I fear that a profit-system cannot be made to yield to the 
ideals and purposes of the kingdom of God. 

Tbe present system rests upon a pagan foundation, and 
exists for a pagan purpose. It revolves around profit as 
surely as the earth revolves around the sun. And I have 
my personal fears that human nature, at the present stage 
of its moral evolution, is not strong enough to stand the 
tremendous strain which a profit-system of industry puts 
upon it. With big profit offering itself as the reward of 
dishonesty, too many men will not be strong enough to be 
honest. With a fortune offering itself as the reward of 
self-seeking, too many men, I fear, will not be noble enough 
to seek their brother's welfare. I have faith in the ability 
of men to respond to the ideals of the kingdom of God un- 
der favorable conditions; but I fear that the majority of 
men are not strong enough to respond to these ideals under 
the great temptations to which the present system is con- 
stantly subjecting them. 

Few great leaders of men have been as optimistic in 
their faith in the average man as was Jesus of ITazareth. 
But Jesus feared the strength of the shackles which the 
possession of wealth, or which the fascination of making 
a fortune, forges around a man's soul. There appears to 
be a doubt in the mind of Jesus of the possibility of con- 
verting a man who has great possessions, or the man who 
is tempted with the desire or the possibility of making a 
great fortune. At any rate it is safe to say that Jesus 
recognized the possession of great wealth, or the possibility 
of coming into the possession of a great fortune, as the 
greatest temptation to which a human being can be sub- 
jected. N'othing else makes a man so self-sufiicient, so in- 
dependent of God, as great wealth. ISTothing else so 
hardens the human heart, — ^nothing else is so destructive 
of the fraternal and sympathetic spirit, — as the desire for 
or the possession of great wealth. It is harder for such a 
man to be converted than it is for a camel to go through the 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 271 

eye of a needle is the doubting judgment of Jesus. It is 
only through the grace of God that it is possible. And in 
many a case the grace of God can operate only after the 
financial barrier is removed. The desire to love one's 
neighbor as one's self, and the desire to make a fortune 
for one's self, will not mix — they are moral incompatibles. 
Either the one or the other desire must vacate the throne. 

It is for this reason that I feel that the present system 
of industry is an obstruction that must be removed before 
the kingdom of God can come "on earth as it is in heaven." 
Those business men who are strictly honest and real 
brothers to their fellow men under a system that en- 
courages them to make all the money that they can make 
are worthy of our highest admiration. Those who keep 
for themselves and families only what their service is 
really worth, and who give their employees all that they 
really earn, and serve the public with the surplus, deserve 
to be singled out, not only as noble servants of the kingdom 
of God, but also as great moral heroes. Such men have 
overcome the greatest temptations to which poor, weak 
human nature can be subjected. 'Not only would the law 
and public opinion allow them to keep for themselves all 
that they have surrendered to their employees and devoted 
to public welfare, but, in addition to these encouragements, 
all the dudish men and the snobbish women in the com- 
munity would hail them as "prince charmings" if they 
would waste their wealth on winter homes and summer 
homes, on automobiles and yachts, and in fast living. It 
requires a splendid type of Christian manhood that will 
be able to withstand such temptations. 

ISTothing that has been said in these discussions must be 
interpreted to indicate that I do not believe that there are 
many individual business men who, by the grace of God, 
have passed through the eye of the needle. A number of 
my dearest personal friends, and some of the noblest char- 
acters that I know, are successful business men. Perhaps, 
by the grace of God, all men who are in business can be- 



272 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

come just and merciful and real brothers to their fellow 
men, even under the awful pressure which the present 
system puts upon them. But I doubt it. I fear that we 
have been perpetuating a system of Industry that is sub- 
jecting human nature to a moral strain gTcater than it is 
able to bear. I am convinced that the system is more to 
blame for the shortcomings of individuals than the indi- 
viduals themselves. In many cases an honest attempt to 
live up to the requirements of the kingdom of God will 
result in bankruptcy under the present competitive system. 
A business man may want to pay his employees an effi- 
cient-living wage, and to give the public a square deal. But 
in the buying market he must compete with men who look 
only to their own profit, and who can buy the raw material 
as cheap as he can, and perhaps cheaper. While he pays 
his employees what their labor really adds to the value of 
the raw material, his competitors purchase labor for the 
least cent that it is possible to buy it. In the selling 
market he must again compete with his unscrupulous com- 
petitors who can undersell him because they had the same 
raw material made into the same finished product at a 
lower cost. Many an honest man who wants to conduct 
his business according to the principles of the kingdom of 
God will live himself into bankruptcy under the present 
competitive system. 

I believe that the christianizing of industry will require 
a change of system just as the christianizing of an indi- 
vidual may require a change of environment. The chris- 
tianizing of industry, — so I sincerely believe, — requires 
the substituting of a system that is Christian in its funda- 
mental purpose for the present one which is pagan in its 
fundamental purpose; a system that aims at service for 
the public instead of profit for the individual; a system 
that will substitute the cooperation of all in the interest of 
all for the competition of individual with individual and 
of group with group in the selfish interest of the individual 
or the group ; a system that will aim at the just remunera- 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 273 

tion of all service and the devotion of the surplus earnings 
to the welfare of the public, instead of a system that pays 
as little as it must for service and for the patronage of the 
public, and hoards up the surplus as private capital. The 
very purpose of such a system, if seriously undertaken, 
would appeal to the best and noblest in men, while the 
present system encourages the most selfish in men. Such 
a system would depend, for its success, upon the stimula- 
tion of the divine instincts, while the present system de- 
pends for its success upon the encouraging of the animal 
instincts. The jungle laws of self-preservation and of 
the survival of the strongest animate the present system, 
while the kingdom laws of mutual good-will and of social 
service would have to animate the proposed system. 

The adoption of such a system would not be as revolu- 
tionary as many good people seem to think. It would 
simply be the application to industry of the identical prin- 
ciples and methods which we have come to cherish in mat- 
ters of government. It would be an industrial system of 
the people, and by the people, and for the people, instead 
of a system of the few, and by the few, and for the few. 
The elaboration of details would require time and experi- 
ence, as has always been the case in the forward movements 
of popular government. The managers and superintend- 
ents of local industries might be elected as we now elect 
our public school teachers, — the people electing a Board 
of Directors, and the Board of Directors electing the super- 
intendents and managers. Each community would attend 
to its own local industries, while the state and the federal 
government would attend to the basic industries which 
concern the welfare of all the citizens of the common- 
wealth, and upon which all local industries depend. A 
fair and just adjustment of the salaries of the superin- 
tendents and the workers, and of the different kinds of 
service and of the different degrees of skill, would require 
time and patience, but should offer no great difficulty. The 
surplus earnings of industry, instead of being amassed as 



274 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

private capital and spent on private mansions and perpet- 
uated for many generations as private fortunes, would be 
devoted to the public welfare, — to public buildings, public 
improvements, and insurance against crop failures, 
depressions, etc. 

If I can read tbe signs of the times, something on this 
order is coming whether we like it or not. The popular 
control of industry is the next forward step in social evo- 
lution. Political autocracy has just been driven from 
its last entrenchments in our modern world at a frightful 
cost of men and money. Democracy: government of the 
people, and by the people, and for the people, instead of 
government by a class of hereditary autocrats in the in- 
terest of an autocratic institution, is an established fact in 
the world of politics. And we cannot expect anything 
other than this in the world of industry. We can- 
not expect two counter currents in our modern life: one 
that moves away from autocracy in matters of government, 
and one that moves towards it in matters of industry. 
Such a thing is impossible. Reactionary forces may delay 
the invasion of the fields of industry by the democratic 
forces. They may be able to crush, by physical force, the 
radical movements that would establish some kind of in- 
dustrial democracy by revolution. But the spirit of the 
democratic movement will not remain crushed, for the 
truths of God and the principles of humanity, though 
crushed to earth, will rise again. Popular government is 
the logical goal of industrial evolution no less surely than 
it is of political evolution. Self-government will invade 
industry. Reasonable men do not expect the new system 
to spring full-fledged from the old system as Athena is 
said to have sprung from the head of Zeus. And for the 
good of the new system we do not want it to come that way. 
We want it to come naturally and gradually, as things 
come in this orderly world of God: "first the blade, then 
the ear, and then the full corn in the ear." 

The popular control of industry is our only hope of 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 275 

salvation from the autocratic control of industry by a 
class. Industry has always been controlled by a class in 
the interest of the class. Once it was the great and power- 
ful landlord class that controlled industry. During the 
last century, especially during the latter half of the cen- 
tury, it was the powerful capitalist class that was in con- 
trol. And in the future, if we will not popularize the 
control of industry, it may be the still more powerful 
laboring class that will be in control. 'No class has ever 
been in complete control of things without abusing its 
power. The landlord class did it ; and the capitalist class 
is doing it ; and it is unreasonable to expect that any class 
of human beings will come into power that will not abuse 
its privileges. Even the church once abused her privilege 
when she suddenly came into possession of gTcat power and 
influence. If we will not popularize industry we may, in 
the future, suffer from an autocracy of labor that will be 
as odious as the autocracy of the landlord class was, or 
as the autocracy of the present capitalist class is. While 
organized labor in England, Canada, and the United 
States has thus far declared war only on the capitalist 
and his system, it does not seem to be friendly to any class 
outside of its own ranks.' In some instances organized 
labor has not shown any more consideration for the public 
than the capitalist or the profiteer has. The coal miners 
do not hesitate to stop the production of coal in the depths 
of winter; and the railroaders and the longshore-men 
seem to have no scruples in shutting off the country's food 
supply to win their own point, no matter how many mil- 
lions of innocent people are made to suffer. The different 
branches of organized labor are not very considerate even 
of one anotlier. Each group seems to be concerned pri- 
marily about its own particular interests. It is this group 
selfishness that has kept the different branches of organ- 
ized labor from coordinating their forces. In certain 
sections of Europe the laborer with the soiled hands is 
making it very uncomfortable for his fellow laborer with 



276 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

the white collar. The deliverance of industry from the 
evils of class prejudice and jealousy and the consequent 
class conflicts demands the democratizing or popularizing 
of industry. 

There is a quite common fear that a popular, or coopera- 
tive, system of industry could not be made as efficient as 
the present system is. It is, of course, a debatable ques- 
tion whether the present system can be called an efficient 
system. That it is a wasteful system is clear. Its un- 
restricted competition wastes not only a great deal of use- 
ful material, but also a great amount of honest and efficient 
business effort. The death rate of business enterprises 
under the present competitive system is almost as great as 
the death rate of infants in some backward community. 
It is not possible to estimate the wastage of human effort 
in the many business failures due to the unrestricted com- 
petition of the present system. At present there is no 
direct way of preventing the overcrowding of those lines 
of industry which offer most inducements, while other 
lines, which are equally as important to the community, 
are undeveloped. One of the leading English authorities 
on industrial questions said recently that there are a dozen 
lines of British industries at the present time that are be- 
ing crowded to death, while a dozen others of equal import- 
ance, but which offer less inducement, are waiting for some 
one to work them. The present system, which is controlled 
by the one idea of profit, has no way of preventing periodic 
over-production in certain lines of industry, and the stag- 
nation, and the unemployment, which follow in the wake of 
over-production. The present lack of cooperation between 
producer and consumer, between buyer and seller, between 
the different producing units, and between the different 
trade centers, has brought about chaos in the business 
world. It is not possible to estimate the wastage due to 
this lack of cooperation. And not only is there a great deal 
of unavoidable wastage, due to the unrestricted competi- 
tion and the lack of cooperation under the present system, 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 277 

but there is, in addition to this, also a great deal of deliber- 
ate wastage. Veblen has shown very forcibly that sabotage 
is practiced by employers as well as by employees.^ If it 
pays better to waste an article than it does to put it on the 
market it is wasted. If it pays better to let a carload of 
potatoes rot, or to cast a ship load of fish back into the sea, 
than it does to put them on the market, they are wasted. 
It is a question w^hether we may call a system efficient 
whose conduct is governed entirely by the idea of profit. 
And in passing judgment upon whatever efficiency 
capitalism may justly claim, let us not forget that it has 
had the influence and the money to draft into its service 
the expert chemists, the expert organizers, and the expert 
managers and salesmen, as fast as our universities and the 
other departments of our life have been able to prepare 
them. Very much of the expert skill of the country is 
drafted into the service of big business to manufacture and 
exchange goods with profit for the concern. Some 
big business concerns have their men who regularly visit 
certain of our high schools and colleges for the purpose of 
getting into touch with the brightest and most promising 
young men, who are offered special inducements to prepare 
themselves for the service of these business concerns^ and 
who are thus side-tracked from any other purpose or call- 
ing that they may have had in mind. By the most subtle 
inducements, the most promising of our young people are 
being side-tracked from the Christian ministry, and from 
the teaching and other liberal professions, and are drafted 
into the service of grinding out profit for big business. 
Having the power to eliminate all dangerous competition, 
and being able to command such expert service, the big 
stock company or the trust could not well do otherwise than 
succeed. When Mr. Andrew Carnegie was asked the 
reason for his phenomenal success, he answered with char- 
acteristic frankness : ^'Because I was always able to sur- 

^ Thursten Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship and the 
State of the Industrial Arts. 



278 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

round myself witli men who knew more about the business 
than I did." Mr. Carnegie's managers, superintendents, 
and departmental experts were chiefly instrumental in his 
successful business career, but Mr. Carnegie made most of 
the money, and got all the credit. 

It is hardly a wild fancy to suppose that the same hired 
experts, who are the real source of the success of the present 
system, could be enlisted for the same service in a cooper- 
ative system. Would not these experts be willing to work 
for the common public as well as for Mr. Carnegie, or Mr. 
Gary, or Mr. Schwab ? And it is surely not unreasonable 
to assume that these same experts, who have made the 
capitalistic system a success, would also make a cooperative 
system, from which all wasteful and destructive competi- 
tion would be eliminated, a success. The same fear that is 
now being expressed about democracy in industry, was very 
commonly expressed by European critics in regard to our 
venture in political democracy here in America only a little 
more than a century ago. But in spite of the fact that we 
have made no special efforts to develop a class of specialists 
in matters of government ; in spite of the fact that we have 
been in the habit of electing to public office quite ordinary 
men, — ^men who have had no special training for their 
work, — our system of popular government has been as 
efficient as the European government by specialists, — 
specialists hy heredity. There is no intrinsic reason to 
fear that self-government in industry would be any less 
successful than it has been in matters of state. A pop- 
ular system of industry would naturally make it its busi- 
ness to develop specialists in the different lines of busi- 
ness. It would, in the nature of the case, aim at the 
culture of a more efficient citizenship in general. This 
would be one of the fine by-products, — a by-product which 
in the end would be worth more than the main product, — 
that we would hope to gain by the change of system. 

Eear is also expressed that such a system of industry 
as the one indicated could not inspire the personal ini- 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 279 

tiative or the personal efforts tbat we have under the pre- 
sent system. That means, in plain words, that men 
would not do their best if a fortune did not offer itself 
as the reward for their services. It implies that the ex- 
pert managers and superintendents would not do their 
best if the possibility of their getting a $100,000 salary, 
plus the possibility of a bonus, would be removed. But 
this fear is unmindful of the fact that there are very 
many people who, in spite of the present profit-tainted 
atmosphere, are doing their very best for higher reasons 
than the selfish hope of a big fortune as the reward of 
their efforts. The artist pursues his work for the love 
of his art, rather than for the love of the money that he 
hopes to get for his product. The surgeon does his very- 
best out of consideration for human life, rather than for 
the sake of the fee. The minister of the Gospel and the 
teacher in the class room do their very best although they 
know that their remuneration will never be more than 
efficient-living requires. The scientist and the inventor 
spend long days and endless weeks on their tasks, with- 
out the hope of a fortune for themselves and families, and 
without a demand for double pay for over-time and holi- 
days. And not only many individuals but whole de- 
partments of our life have risen to that moral stage in 
their evolution where mere money considerations have 
ceased to be the controlling motive. Eeligion, science, 
art, and philosophy, have all risen above the selfish stage 
where nothing but money rewards will serve as a motive 
for the most honest and strenuous service. 

And shall industry continue to be the only department 
of our life that refuses to yield to the ideals and motives 
of the kingdom of God? Will our brothers in business 
continue to be the only people who refuse to do their very 
best unless we allow them to make all the money that they 
can make legally, and yet a little that may not be quite 
legal ? Shall we continue to consider it impossible to lift 
the basic struggle for our daily bread into that higher 



280 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

atmosphere where consideration for one another's wel- 
fare and happiness will take the place of the present vul- 
gar and brutalizing desire to make all the money that we 
can make? I believe that it is possible. We must have 
faith in the kingdom of God, and faith in men. The 
main reason why there has not been more unselfish service 
in business is because the present system does not encour- 
age it. The system is more at fault than the people 
under it. I believe that the love for public service, and 
the natural desire for the esteem and good will of one's 
neighbors, which are controlling motives in a cooperative 
system, can be made substitutes for the debasing love of 
money, which is the curse of the present system. I be- 
lieve that the presidents of our great railway systems 
would do their best under a system of government owner- 
ship and control. I believe that the heads of our great 
corporations would, under a cooperative system, do their 
very best for a reasonable salary, plus the public esteem 
and gratitude which their service would merit. If they 
would not be willing to do their very best when not al- 
lowed to make all the money that they can make and be- 
queath it to their offspring for generations to come, we 
should not hesitate to classify them, and all others like 
them, with the reddest of the red. Any successful busi- 
ness man who would not be willing to step over into a 
cooperative system, in case his fellow citizens should, in 
a fair and legal way, determine upon such a system, and 
work as hard as he did when he was reasonably sure of 
$1,000,000 a year as the reward for his labors, should 
be classed among the social undesirables. 

And it is also argued that such cooperative system of 
industry would be open to all sorts of political graft and 
trickery which, in the end, would be as intolerable as the 
present exploitation of the capitalist. Of course, we 
would not expect any institution that is made up of or- 
dinary human beings to be free from all evil and abuse. 
But we know quite well that the main reason for political 



The Church and the Intensive Growth of the Kingdom 281 

crookedness is not the fun of playing the crooked game, 
but the hope of getting away with a lot of money and us- 
ing it for one's own purposes. This ulterior motive for 
graft would be reduced to a minimum by the removal of 
the possibility of any individual citizen making a big for- 
tune and living in extravagance on the surplus of 
either his salary or his thefts. In a society in which 
every man who is not too lazy to work would receive a 
salary sufficient to live life at its best, but in which no one 
would receive enough to live in extravagance, it would 
not be a difficult matter to detect the theft of great sums 
of public funds. If society would offer no opportunity 
to spend a big fortune in wasteful ways, and if there 
were no way of bequeathing a vast fortune to our child- 
ren and grand-children for them to live in extravagance, 
the keen edge would be taken from our desire to steal. 
The keener sense of public duty, and the more stinging 
condemnation of the betrayal of any public trust, which 
the cooperative system would foster, would act as a still 
further deterrent of theft and graft. One _pf the many 
agreeable surprises that I experienced in the study of the 
cooperative business in England and in certain other 
European countries, was the conspicuous absence of graft 
and of thefts of public funds. There would undoubtedly 
be considerable hardship, and some real suffering, b^ 
cause of the readjustments that would have to be made 
in passing from the present system to a cooperative sys- 
tem. But we should be willing to endure some incon- 
venience for a generation or two in order that there might 
be a better world 100 years or 500 years from to-day. 

I find many people who agree with all that I have just 
said, but like Marie Antoinette, they say: "After us, 
the deluge.'' Well, the deluge is coming. There are no 
reactionary forces that can hold out indefinitely against 
the oncoming tides of social evolution. The present au- 
tocratic forces may be sufficinetly entrenched, and may be 
able to wield sufficient political power, to check their 



282 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

progress for a while, but turn tlie tides of evolution back- 
ward tbey cannot. The feeling of dissatisfaction and of 
grievance on the part of the masses of mankind has been 
gaining momentum as it has been coming down the cen- 
turies, from the fourteenth dynasty of Egypt to the end 
of the Romanoff rule in Eussia and the Hohenzollem rule 
in Germany. The world will never again be the same 
as it was before 1914. The war may not have created 
many new social forces, but it set many pent-up forces 
free. The passing of the political autocrats from the 
thrones of Europe will hasten the passing of the auto- 
crats of industry and of finance everywhere. Industry 
of the people and by the people will follow in the wake 
of government of the people and by the people. In- 
dustry will change hands; and we must get it into safer 
hands than the hands of a class. The winning of in- 
dustry for Jesus Christ is the outstanding task of the 
church of the twentieth century as much as the winning 
of the Roman empire was the distinguishing task of the 
church of the first and second centuries. 

"Come, clear the way then, clear the way; 

Blind creeds and kings have had their day. 

Break the dead branches from the path; 

Our hope is in the aftermath. 

Our hope is in heroic men. 

Star-led to build the world again. 

To this event the ages ran; 

Make way for brotherhood, make way for man." 



EVIDEI^CE THAT THE KINGDOM HAS BEEIST 

coMiisra 



CHAPTER FIVE 

EVIDEI^CE THAT THE KINGDOM HAS BEEN COMING 

THE social atmosphere is heavy with seliishness 
and gTeed and distrust; but the skies are red 
with the promise of a fairer tomorrow. The 
kingdom of God has been coming. The world of to-day 
is a little better than the world of yesterday; and the 
world of tomorrow will be a little better than the world 
of to-day. It may be unwise to point to any particular 
thing in our life, or to any temporary movement, and say : 
lo, here, or lo, there, is the kingdom. JSTevertheless there 
are certain sections of our social life that show such 
clear evidence of a moral evolution that we may point 
to them and say with confidence : Lo, here, the kingdom 
has been coming. 



THE KINGDOM HAS BEEN COMING THKOUGH THE MOEAL 

EVOLUTION OF RELIGION AND OF THE INSTITUTION THAT 

HAS BEEN SERVING ITS PURPOSES 

It has been the custom to deduce the evidence for the 
coming of the kingdom of God from the progress that 
has been made in the more external matters of the relig- 
ious program. We have been in the habit of meas- 
uring the advent of the kingdom by the number of new 
converts that have been made, the number of new churches 
that have been built, and the amount of money that has 
been raised for religious purposes. These things are an 
evidence of the coming of the kingdom; but they are not 
the surest evidence that we have. The kingdom has not 
always come in the degree that progress was made in 



285 



286 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

these matters. There were times in the history of the 
Christian church when her membership was notably in- 
creased, and when money was lavishly poured into her 
coffers, while the real interests of the kingdom of God 
were not advanced at all. Progress in justice and mercy, 
in good-will and fair-play among men, has not always been 
commensurate with the progress of religion and the 
church. For our evidence that the kingdom has really 
been coming we must look to the heart of religion and to 
the soul of the church, rather than to the membership roll 
and the benevolent register. It is only as religion be- 
comes a holy passion for service, and only as the church 
becomes a means of relating our religion to our individ- 
ual and our social life, that the kingdom of God comes in 
and through religion and the church. It is only as re- 
ligion and the church will link up their resources in con- 
structive efforts for righteousness that they will further 
the cause of the kingdom of God, or the brotherhood- 
world. 

And there is evidence that substantial progress has been 
made in these more fundamental things. Both religion 
and the organization that has been serving its purposes 
have been undergoing a process of moral evolution. 
There is more of the spirit of the kingdom of God in 
religion and the church to-day than there ever was before. 
Tradition has pointed us back to a golden age which ap- 
proximated moral perfection, from which high estate 
mankind is said to have fallen by transgression. But 
history, on the contrary, points us back to the crude be- 
ginnings of all things, from which there has been a grad- 
ual evolution from lower physical, mental, and moral 
stages to higher stages. And religion shows unmistak- 
able evidence of the same gradual transformation that 
we see in the other departments of our life. We have 
made the same moral progress in religion that we have 
made elsewhere in our life. 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 287 

The Moral Evolution of Religion. — Keligion had its 
beginnings in essentially selfish motives. Schleiermacher 
said that religion had its origin in mankind's feeling of 
absolute dependence upon God. But the God upon 
whose almightly power primitive] mankind felt itself 
absolutely dependent at so many points was not conceived 
of as a perfect moral Being, but was the personification 
of the mysterious and capricious forces of nature, which 
to-day blessed man and on the morrow cursed him. The 
first religious response which this feeling of absolute de- 
pendence upon capricious Almightiness called forth was 
not moral, but essentially selfish. On the one hand, reli- 
gion was merely a contrivance to appease the anger, or to 
avert the displeasure, of the Deity. Costly sacrifices of 
fruit and animals, and even children, were offered to pre- 
vent the capricious gods from devouring the people with 
pestilence or drought. On the other hand, costly sacrifices 
were offered for the selfish purpose of bribing the bribable 
gods to favor their devotees with good health or good 
crops. Religion was not consciously related to the moral 
life of the people. Most of the pagan religions are in 
this selfish stage of their evolution to-day. Traces of this 
selfish aspect of primitive religion still cling to the higher 
forms of religion. Even Christians join the church and 
say their prayers to keep on the good side of God, whom 
they do not trust and worship as a perfect moral be- 
ing. 

The second stage in the evolution of religion might 
be broadly characterized as a feeling of adoration for the 
mysterious Almightiness upon which man is absolutely 
dependent at so many points. This stage is reached 
when mankind comes to that point in its mental 
evolution where the crude feeling of fear is superseded 
by the higher emotion of reverent awe of the Almighty 
Power that is at the heart of the universe. At this stage 
in his mental and moral evolution man not only recognizes 



288 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

the power, but also the beauty, the orderliness, and 
the goodness of the Deity. Religion becomes essentially 
a feeling of reverent awe before the manifestations 
of the Deity, and an expression of appreciation of 
the beneficence of the Deity. It is at this stage of 
religious evolution that faith builds itself into massive 
temples of magnificent architecture, and expresses it- 
self in glorious anthems of praise, and in beautiful 
acts of solemn worship. But religion, even at this 
stage, is not necessarily moral. All this magnificence 
of architecture, and this solemnity of ritual, may fail 
to relate themselves in any vital sense to the character 
of the individual worshiper, or to the welfare of the 
community. Religion at this stage of its evolution is 
essentially non-moral. 

The next stage in the upward evolution of religion is 
I reached at that point where it enters as a vital factor into 
I the worshiper's moral life. The worshiper not only 
; appreciates the goodness and the beneficence of God ; but 
he also desires to be what his own moral reason assures 
him that the good God wants him to be. He feels his 
dependence upon God in his efforts to be a good man as 
truly as he does in his efforts to raise a good crop of com. 
His religion now becomes an unselfish reaching up to God 
\ for the help which he feels that nothing in this world can 
i give him. It is at this point that a man's religion becomes 
/ a distinct moral force in his life. But his religion may 
.' still be essentially individualistic, and in this respect, 
selfish. He may still be chiefly concerned about his own 
temporal and eternal welfare. He loves his God, but 
he has not yet come to that point of religious excellence 
where he loves his neighbor as himself. Religion, at 
this stage, has become a moral force in the worshiper's 
life; but because it is still essentially individualistic it 
is only indirectly related to the establishing of the king- 
dom of God, or the righteous social order — a social order 
in which every other individual shall, by virtue of his 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 289 

sonship of God, have the same privileges and opportun- 
ities that I have. 

The final stage in the evolution of religion is reached 
at that point where it becomes a holy passion for social 
service — a constraining impulse to secure "the abundant 
life" for every member of the great human family of 
God, — an irresistible desire to place earth and heaven 
and all that in them is at the disposal of everybody. 
This is the sublime height that religion reached in the 
life and teachings of the Hebrew prophets of the eighth 
and seventh centuries b. c, and above all in the life and 
teachings of Jesus of J^azareth. Up toward this sublime 
height an ever increasing number of religious people 
have been wending their way. Many of the non-moral 
and the selfish elements of primitive religion still cling- 
to the religions of to-day — even to the higher forms of 
religion. But the encouraging thing is the fact that the 
Protestant religion — the religion that bids fair to dom- 
inate the religious life of mankind — feels the impulse of 
this Christ-like passion for social service. Of all the 
many motives of Protestant Christianity the strongest is 
the desire to be of service to humanity. 

It is in the fact that religion has been undergoing a pro- 
cess of ethical transformation, rather than in the increase 
in the number of adherents, that we see real evidence of 
the coming of the kingdom of God. 

The Moral Evolutioyi of the Church. — And not only 
has religion been undergoing a slow process of moral 
transformation, but so also has the church, or the insti- 
tution that has been serving the purposes of religion. 
There is more of the kingdom-spirit of unselfish service 
in the church to-day than there has been at any time 
since the days of the Apostles, especially in the Protestant 
branch of the Christian church. I spoke frankly, in 
these discussions, of the church's shortcomings ; and of 
the shortcomings of the Protestant cliurch as well as of 



290 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

the Catliolic church. The church has failed to apply 
the whole of the Gospel to the whole of life. She has 
been indifferent to questions of civic unrighteousness and 
industrial iniquity. She has choked at the gnats in our 
social life, while she has swallowed the camels with no 
apparent discomfort. She has been very slow to recog- 
nize the full sphere and purpose of her mission. She is 
still over-emphasizing non-essentials, and slighting the 
essentials. She is very slow, and in some places even 
reluctant, to adapt her message and her ministry to the 
changing conditions of the times. There are individual 
ministers and individual congregations who willfully do 
wrong. I expressed my fear that, in certain sections, the 
church is still deliberately playing into the hands of pred- 
atory wealth, rather than championing the cause of right- 
eousness and justice. But in spite of all her shortcom- 
ings, and in spite of the deliberate wrongdoings of certain 
individual ministers and of individual congregations, no 
one can charge the Protestant church of to-day, as an in- 
stitution, with deliberate or willful wrongdoing. The 
sins of the Protestant church of to-day are sins of omis- 
sion, rather than sins of commission. Her shortcomings, 
and they are many, are nevertheless matters of the head 
rather than of the heart. Her mistakes, as an institution, 
are not a matter of willful perversion, but of a lack of un- 
derstanding. In her heart of hearts the Protestant church 
of to-day is sound. Although her theology is out of gear 
with our modern world, she nevertheless wants to serve. 
This is the encouraging thing about the ecclesiastical sit- 
uation to-day. What our Protestant church needs is a 
change of view-point, rather than a change of heart. 

But there was a time when the church did not only 
need a change of view-point, but also a change of heart. 
The church in the days of the prophets and Jesus was 
controlled by selfish rather than by benevolent intentions. 
The priests and their institution exploited the helpless 
and superstitious people without an honest effort to ren- 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 291 

der a real service. The kingdom of God vvas not in the 
church then, nor could it come into society through the 
church. On the contrary, the Jewish church was an ob- 
stacle in the way of its coming, and had to be superseded 
by a new religious organization in order that the coming 
of the kingdom of God might not be permanently obstruct- 
ted. Nor was the church of the Middle Ages an instru- 
ment of the kingdom of God in any real sense. The 
Christian church of those days was a self-centered, ex- 
ploiting institution. She was guilty of deliberate wrong- 
doing. She was guilty of forgery, of extortion, and of 
robbery. Heaven and hell were mortgaged to fill the 
coffers of an apostate church. The people were deliber- 
ately kept in igTiorance for the purpose of playing upon 
their superstitions and fears in order to exploit them the 
more readily in the interests of the priests and their in- 
stitution. And these mistakes were not of the head, but 
of the heart. The church was willfully doing wrong. 
The very soul of the church was bad. The church herself 
was as much in need of conversion as the world she sought 
to convert. The kingdom of God was coming then, but 
it was coming outside of the church, and in spite of the 
church. The kingdom of God was coming through 
science and philosophy, through literature and art, 
through the self-sacrificing labors of men who were stig- 
matized by the church as atheists and bad men because 
their views did not harmonize with those of the church. 
Once more, as in the days of the Jews, an apostate church 
had to give way to a new religious organization in order 
that the coming of the kingdom of God might not be re- 
tarded. 

The situation is quite different to-day, if I understand 
it. After having fallen from grace during the Middle 
Ages, the church began to undergo a process of conversion 
as real and as marked as that of any individual whom 
she has ever tried to convert. Her conversion began with 
the Eef ormation, and the process of regeneration has con- 



292 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

tiirned, witli intermittent lapses, down to onr own day. 
The Protestant cliurcli has experienced a change of heart 
during the trying circumstances of the last few years. 
'What the Protestant church of to-day needs is a new vis- 
. ion rather than a new heart, — enlightenment, rather than 
conversion. The Protestant church of our day, if I un- 
derstand her, is willing to do her duty as she sees it and 
understands it; and in this fact lies the real gain that 
we have made. It is in this change of the heart of the 
church, rather than in the increase of her membership 
and her wealth, that we see evidence of the coming of the 
kingdom of God. The kingdom has been coming into the 
church ; and as it comes into the church, it will also come 
into our respective communities, and into the world at 
' large, through the church. 

But if we look only to the church for our evidence of 
the coming of the kingdom of God, whether we look to her 
growth in numbers and in material power, or to her growth 
in grace, we will confine ourselves to too narrow a circle 
of influence. The kingdom of God has been coming out- 
side of the church as well as in the church. The church 
has been influenced as much by the righteous movements 
which originated in the world outside, as the world has 
been influenced by those movements that were started by 
the church. She has not led the way in the onward march 
of social evolution. She has been following in the paths 
of the great social movements of history, rather than 
launching the movements in which the world followed. 
The forces that finally resulted in the Protestant Reform- 
ation and in the breaking up of Medisevalism originated 
outside of the church — in literature and science — and 
only gradually, and against much opposition, found their 
way into the church. The forces that are at this very 
moment shaking up our semi-pagan social order had their 
origin outside of the church, and are slowly and timidly 
finding their way into the church. We are speaking of our 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 293 

"forward movement'^ in the interest of social righteous- 
ness only after science and literature have urged the mat- 
ter for a decade or two. 

There are certain sections of our social life outside of 
the church where the principles of the kingdom of God 
have made marked progress. It may be of some en- 
couragement, especially in these disquieting times, to re- 
view these sections briefly in closing. If we will see by 
what diverse pathways, and by means of what a variety 
of agencies, the kingdom of God has been coming ; — if we 
will see that there are other than purely religious forces, 
and other than strictly ecclesiastical agencies at work, it 
may give us new hope to grapple with the still unsolved 
problems, and new courage to march on to the still un- 
occupied territory. 

II 

THE KliSrGDO'M HAS BEEN COMIJ^G THROUGH THE EISE AND 
SPREAD OiF THE DEMOCRATIO SPIRIT 

The kingdom of God has been coming in the path of the 
onward march of the democratic spirit. There is a point 
where democracy and the kingdom of God may be said to 
become synonymous terms. When democracy becomes 
thoroughly sanctified in all its departments, — when it 
becomes an institution "holy unto the Lord,'' when it be- 
comes a cooperative society in the interest of the fullest 
justice and the highest welfare of each individual citizen 
and of all groups of citizens, — then it is the kingdom of 
God on earth. 

The Progress of Democracy in matters of Government. 
— Imperfect as government still is, even in the best of 
states, nevertheless great progress has been made. Prim- 
itive society was governed entirely by the jungle laws 
of the struggle for existence and the survival of the 
strongest. These unsocial instincts controlled individuals 



294 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

and groups of individuals. They controlled the conduct 
of tribes and of races. The struggle for existence pro- 
duced a natural competition for leadership. We find 
such competition even among the gregarious animals. 
And this competition for leadership or for supremacy 
among individuals and among groups of individuals, re- 
sulted in the division of society into classes. Some be- 
came rulers and others were ruled; some became masters 
and owners, and others became servants and slaves. The 
struggle for existence, and the consequent division of so- 
ciety into classes, was strictly in compliance with nature. 
It was the struggle of the vegetable and the animal world 
continued in the world of human society. There is some- 
thing fascinating and exhilarating about it. 

If the struggle between individuals and between groups 
of individuals had continued in compliance with that 
fundamental law of nature which gives to each animal 
according to its ability and perseverance in the struggle, 
we would have no fault to find with the unequal rewards 
of our efforts. The rewarding of the struggle of life 
according to each one's ability and perseverance in the 
game, is not wrong. If individuals and groups of in- 
dividuals had continued to take their place in society ac- 
cording to their ability for leadership and their willing- 
ness and fitness to serve, no one would be justified to 
criticise the unequal distribution of the fruits of the so- 
cial struggle. But the struggle was not continued on the 
basis of each individual's fitness for leadership, or 
worthiness of supremacy. Those individuals who had 
won the place of leadership by virtue of their ability and 
their perseverance, soon began, by means of artificial con- 
trivances, to fortify and to secure against any future 
changes, the place or the advantage which they had thus 
won. Social organizations were formed for the specific 
purpose of furthering and safe-guarding the advantages 
of one class to the disadvantage of other classes. In 
time the children of the different classes no longer began 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 295 

the struggle for existence on the basis of their individual 
natural ability, as is the case in the world of nature; 
but on the higher or lower plane of the advantage or the 
disadvantage of the class in which they happened to be 
born. 

When society assumed the legal aspect the law itself, 
in many cases, became an instrument to further the in- 
terests of the one class against the rights and privileges of 
the other class. The laws, as a rule, were made by the 
leader or victor class; and naturally enough they were 
made for their special benefit. The dispossessed class, 
the servants and slaves, had neither voice nor hand in 
the making or the executing of the laws by which their 
own interests and lives were governed. And the laws 
Vv^ere interpreted and executed by the same class that 
made them; and it was done in the interest of those by 
whom and for whom the laws were made. In time the 
class differences, which had resulted naturally from the 
primitive struggle for existence, became fixed by law and 
sanctioned by public opinion. By the natural law of 
accumulation, assisted by artificial contrivances, the gap 
between the possessing and the dispossessed classes was 
constantly widening. Against the division of society 
into classes on the basis of ability for leadership or qual- 
ification and willingTiess for service, no reasonable man 
will protest. But against the fortifying and conserving of 
our advantages from generation to generation by me^ans of 
artificial contrivances, a practice which makes a fair and 
legitimate competition impossible, all good men should 
register their protest. That has made a natural struggle 
an immoral struggle. 

And not only were the advantages of the victor class 
conserved and protected from generation to generation 
by artificial means, but the practice was glossed over by 
the creation of a public sentiment which recognized the 
right of one class of citizens to subjugate other classes. 
'No one in that unsocial world questioned — or would 



296 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

dare to question — that some were born to rule and others 
to be ruled, — that some were born to own and to enjoy 
the world, and that others were born to toil and to grind. 
]^ot only the laws on the statute books, but religion, ethics, 
and public opinion, all of which were the creatures of the 
upper classes, placed the different classes of citizens on 
different planes as human beings. Men were supposed 
to be bom for the different spheres of life, and, conse- 
quently, with different rights and privileges. The child 
bom in the home of the king, the landlord, the priest, the 
soldier, or the scholar, was born with the divine right to 
the privileges and the enjoyments of life, while the child 
born in the home of the peasant or the slave, had no rights 
or privileges at all. Our domestic animals fare better at 
the hands of our laws than did the great helpless host of 
slaves, ''the hewers of wood and the drawers of water,'' 
of the ancient social order. Our society has passed laws 
to prevent cruelty to the dumb animal that draws the 
plow; but ancient society had neither statute law nor 
public sentiment to prevent cruelty to the dumb man who 
did society's hard and unpleasant work. 

In the Roman world, where free citizenship carried 
with it so many coveted privileges, the inalienable rights 
of the dispossessed slave class which made up half 
of the population in the larger cities, were not recognized 
at all. That noble Roman, the elder Cato, who was uni- 
versally recognized as one of the model men of his day 
and country, taught that slaves had no rights which free 
men had to respect. Even so great and good a man as 
Marcus Aurelius declared it to be beneath the dignity of 
a free man to show any pity for a slave, or to exercise 
any concern for his welfare. One of the Roman noble- 
men is said to have cut up his old slaves rather than his 
pigs to feed the fish in his private ponds. There was 
neither statute law nor public opinion, — there was neither 
church nor society for the prevention of cruelty to ani- 
mals, to prevent or to protest such an inhuman act. 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 297 

The democracy of Pericles of Athens, a fair oasis in 
the arid desert of ancient class government, affected only 
the circle of free citizens of Athens. Under Pericles the 
highest office in the gift of the province, the archonsMp, 
,was open to the lowliest citizens. But the great slave 
element of the population, those who did all the burden- 
some work, were excluded from both the privilege and the 
protection of the laws of otherwise democratic Athens. 

Government in the ancient social order, in many cases, 
was an instrument specially forged for the suppression 
of one class of people in the interest of another class ; and 
religion, ethics, and public opinion, connived at the evil. 
Life in organized society had become something quite 
different from the natural struggle for existence and for 
leadership. The struggle of the individual ajid of groups 
of individuals was no longer rewarded on the basi?. of 
ability or of perseverance in the struggle. On the con- 
trary, many who struggled hard and persevered long re- 
ceived nothing but their miserable existence, while many 
who never did an honest day's toil lived in extravagance 
and luxury. The kingdom of God, which is .a universal 
brotherhood, cannot come where religion, law, ethics, 
and public opinion, sanction a fundamental difference 
between classes of people. The kingdom of God has been 
able to come only where the rise of the democratic spirit 
has destroyed the legalizing of class differences and class 
rights. 

But we need not go back to ancient society to find 
class distinctions woven into the very texture of the law 
itself. The recognition of fundamental class differences 
and of the consequent class privileges, was an essential 
element in the theory of government in the best states of 
Europe only a few centuries ago. Inequality of class 
rights and privileges was made a part of the Constitution 
of the state in the Feudal days of Europe. The supres- 
sion of the weak by the strong was a right that was 
granted by the laws on the statute books. The law itself 



298 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

placed the nobleman, who owned the land, upon a differ- 
ent plane from the peasant, who worked the land. Not 
only public opinion, but the law of the commonwealth, 
recognized them as different persons, who had different 
rights and privileges. For example, the law gave the 
nobleman the right of trial by a judge and a jury of his 
own class; but this same privilege was denied the poor 
man. On the contrary, the poor man was tried by a 
judge and a jury of the nobility, against whose class the 
crime was supposed to have been committed, and by 
whom, and for whose special benefit and protection, the 
laws were made. There was little chance for the poor 
man under such conditions. ''Imagine," says Rausch- 
enbusch, ''that the constitution of Illinois provided that 
a director of a corporation could be tried only by a jury 
of corporation officers, and that every public service cor- 
poration had the right to operate its own court of justice 
to settle all difficulties with its employees and the common 
public, and could put the offensive citizen who protested 
the size of his gas bill into the corporation jail." ^ Such 
a thing is inconceivable to one born and reared in America, 
where democracy has made some progress. But in spirit, 
that is precisely what was done in the best states of Europe 
only a few hundred years ago. It was a case where the 
laws were made, interpreted, and executed by the pos- 
sessing class and, naturally enough, for their special 
benefit. The serfs, the great host of ignorant peasants on 
the fruits of whose patient and ceaseless toiling, the rest 
of the citizens lived, had no part in the making or the 
executing of the laws by which their own lives were 
governed. The Feudal sword of justice had only one 
edge. It was made and wielded by the nobility with 
the intention of cutting only in the direction of the poor 
and helpless. For the identical crime — for example 
poaching — the poor man was severely punished, while 
the rich man, for whom "Our Father in heaven" was 

^ Christianizing the Social Order, p. 149. 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 299 

supposed to have created the game, was not punished at 
all. There were many crimes for which the poor man 
received severe punishment, while the rich man received 
only slight punishment, and very frequently no punish- 
ment at all. 

The thing that concerns us especially in this discus- 
sion is the fact that this injustice was not perpetrated 
through the evasion of the law, as is still quite frequently 
done in the best of our modern communities; but it was 
done by the permission and at the suggestion of the law. 
The recognition of a fundamental class difference, and 
the consequent denial of equal rights and privileges to 
the different classes, was part and parcel of the law it- 
self. The privilege of one class of citizens to exploit 
and subjugate another class was a right that was granted 
by the Constitution of the Feudal state. The kingdom of 
God, which is a brotherhood of all citizens, was barred 
from the Feudal communities of Europe by this undem- 
ocratic spirit which had entrenched itself in the Constitu- 
tion of the state. 

The inequality of rights and privileges of different 
classes of citizens was legalized in certain undemocratic 
states even in the twentieth century. In the Russia of 
the late Czar E^icholas a legal difference was recognized 
between the nobleman and the peasant. The two classes 
of citizens did not receive the same punishment for the 
identical crime. The punishment of the poor man was 
severe, often cruel, while that of the rich man was light. 
Russian absolutism was an organized attempt to subju- 
gate and exploit certain classes of citizens in the interest of 
others. Undemocratic Russia bred its Sovietism and its 
Bolshevism as naturally as barren soil breeds mullen 
stalks. Wherever an organized attempt is made to per- 
petuate the ancient class wrongs in the twentieth century 
we may expect violent reactions against it. The ferment 
of the rising democratic spirit will sooner or later blow 
the corks off of despotic states. 



300 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

In the Prussia of tlie late emperor Willielm tlie law 
placed army officers, government officials, and rich prop- 
erty owners, npon a different plane from ordinary work- 
ing people. In the Germany of only six years ago, as 
well as in a few other countries in Europe, class privil- 
eges were being perpetuated by means of the plural bal- 
lot. By this undemocratic device a few wealthy property 
owners (no matter by what questionable means their 
property may have been acquired,) could outvote a whole 
community on certain questions — even questions that con- 
cerned the most vital interests of the masses. In this way 
the balance of power was kept in the hands of the privileged 
minority. The plural ballot was a legal means of protect- 
ing the interests and the privileges of the minority against 
the rights of the majority. It is against this kind of un- 
social break-water that the tides of the democratic spirit 
have been pounding for centuries, and the foundations are 
gradually being washed from under it. 

My saying that the kingdom of God has been coming 
through the rise and spread of the democratic spirit is not 
inspired by what I have seen of the actual practice of 
democratic government; for we all know that the prac- 
tice of government, even in the best of states, is still far 
from ideal. Partisan politics even in our most demo- 
cratic communities, is still shamefully corrupt. The en- 
couraging thing, however, is the fact that the modern 
^democratic state rests upon the same fundamental princi- 
ples upon which the kingdom of God rests, even if the prac- 
tice of democratic government is still lamentably corrupt 
and inefficient. The fundamental purpose of democratic 
government is in accord with the fundamental purpose of 
the kingdom of God. In theory the institution of democ- 
racy is sound. It exists for the sake of service for all. 
Instead of being the organized expression of a class in the 
interest of a class, democratic government is the organized 
expression of the equal rights and privileges of all citizens. 
The purpose of the democratic state is to govern all the re- 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 301 

lations of all its people with justice, and to safeguard 
all the interests of all its citizens. In theory, at least, 
it is society organized for the purpose of guaranteeing 
to each individual citizen equal liberty with all other 
citizens. The glory of democratic government is that it 
constitutionalizes the equality of rights and privileges 
of all its citizens. This is a great moral gain over the un- 
social class governments of the ancient and the Feudal 
world, in which the recognition of class differences and 
of class privileges was woven into the very texture of the 
law itself. And every gain that we have made in the 
matter of universal justice is an evidence that the kingdom 
of Grod has been coming. 

The ends of justice, as we all know, are often defeated 
in the most democratic communities. "We still have class 
legislation. We still have legislation of ^^the interests," 
and by "the interests," and for "the interests." One only 
needs to study the personnel of our different state 
legislatures, and especially of the United States Senate 
and Congress, to see why this is so. We will con- 
tinue to have class legislation so long as our legisla- 
tures are composed of such a preponderating major- 
ity of corporation lawyers and of hirelings of big inter- 
ests. But in a democracy, such as ours, the people have 
the means at hand to change things if once they will get 
the sense to do it. This power is no longer systematically 
denied them as it once was. Some judges, and some courts 
of justice, still make a difference between the man who has 
money and the man who has none; or between the blue- 
blooded aristocrat and the anaemic proletarian. The more 
money and social prestige a man has the better is his 
chance to win his case in any legal matter in almost 
any court of justice even here in the United States. 
Money can command the services of the shrewdest and 
most unscrupulous lawyers. And money has the power 
to postpone the rendering of justice until the poor man has 
become exhausted. But whatever difference is made be- 



302 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

tween the ricli man and tlie poor man, in the courts of a 
democracy, is not made by the explicit right given by the 
Constitution, as was once almost universally the case. It 
is the perversion of the law, and not the law itself, that 
makes a difference between the rich man and the poor 
man, between the employer and the employee, in a de- 
mocracy; and herein is the gain that we have made in 
the matter of justice. The Constitution of the modern 
democratic state recognizes no fundamental difference of 
rights and privileges in its citizens. All are recognized as 
human beings, and all have the same rights before the law. 
The men who are guilty of making class distinctions in 
their interpretation or execution of the law cannot claim 
the constitutional right to do so. It is clear that progress 
has been made in the matter of justice; and where plain 
justice comes to its own, lo, there, the kingdom of God 
has been coming. There may be more substantial evi- 
dence that the kingdom of God is coming in the popular 
indignation over a case of wrested justice, or in the pop- 
ular demand for the recall of an unjust and dishonest 
public official, than there is in the enthusiasm over a 
^'Billy Sunday'' evangelistic campaign. 

Wherever the cause of true democracy has been ad- 
vanced, whether in the church or in the state, lo, there, 
the kingdom of God has been coming. When the Con- 
stitution of the United States was adopted in 1789, only 
about 120,000 of our 3,000,000 inhabitants had the 
right of suffrage. The kingdom of God came through 
the political measures that gave the right of suffrage 
to all male citizens with a white skin. But in 1861 
there were still several million inhabitants of our 
great free country, who were toiling like beasts of burden 
for their white masters and for the enrichment of our 
country, but who were denied all participation in the mak- 
ing and the executing of the laws by which their own life 
and destiny were determined. The kingdom of God came 
in the widening spirit of democracy that eliminated the 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 303 

color line in the matter of suffrage, and which gave this 
subjugated class the right to participate in the determina- 
tion of its own destiny, a right which birth as a human 
being carries with it. The kingdom of God will come in 
still fuller measure when once we become Christian 
enough to lay aside our racial prejudice and will extend 
the helping hand of a real brother to these black children 
of Our Father in heaven. The Kingdom came, and it 
will continue to come, through the enfranchising of our 
17,000,000 women, who are in all essential respects the 
equals of us men, and in many respects our superiors, 
but who were denied the right of their political self- 
determination on the undemocratic ground that they are 
women. Those who do not see through their political or 
theological glasses darkly see more evidence of the coming 
of the kingdom of God in the enfranchising of our women 
than in the recent raising of vast sums of money for the 
church. The entering of the educated woman into public 
life on an equality with man will add moral leaven to the 
partisan politics which has turned to corruption in the 
hands of many generations of male politicians. 

In a word then : it is the idealism of its purpose rather 
than its actual practice that has made political democracy 
an ally of the kingdom of God. One of the urgent tasks 
before us is to make the practice of democracy as Chris- 
tian as its theory. In this christianizing of the practice 
of government the church can render an important service, 
and we look to her to do it. ^N'othing will excuse the 
church of the future for conniving at or sanctioning the 
unjust practice of government, as she did in the days of 
Feudal landlordism, and as she did quite recently in 
despotic Russia and in bureaucratic Germany. The 
church was holding elaborate services in the old Feudal 
communities, and in modern Russia and Germany, but no 
protest was registered against the iniquitous practice of 
class legislation. The church either connived at the evil, 
or, at times, even encouraged it. Of such things she 



304 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

dare not be guilty in tlie future. In contributing to the 
spread of true and efficient democracy the church con- 
tributes to the coming of the kingdom of God as really and 
as effectively as when she holds revival meetings. The 
kingdom of God and true democracy are coming hand in 
hand. 

The Progress of Democracy in Education. — Democracy 
in government and democracy in education have been 
acting and reacting upon each other. On the one hand, 
the progress of democracy in government has been the 
cause of the invasion of the field of education by the 
spirit of democracy ; and, on the other hand, the progress 
of popular education has been the cause of still more 
democracy in government. The occupation of these im- 
portant fields by the democratic spirit has been one of the 
most powerful allies of the kingdom of God. Through 
no other single channel, not excepting religion, has the 
kingdom of God been coming into our modern life more 
than through popular education. IsTo other single agency, 
not excepting the church, has been a more potent factor 
in hastening the coming of the kingdom of God than our 
public schools. 

I venture this statement in spite of the quite common 
feeling in certain religious circles that modern education 
is essentially irreligious. It is true that the religious in- 
struction that is given in our public schools, from the 
grade schools on up to our great state universities, equals 
zero. And it is also true that education in our own 
country and throughout Europe has become a prey of the 
commercial spirit. The modern efficiency idea has dis- 
placed the old cultural idea in education ; and this change 
in emphasis has not been all gain. While we believe in 
efficiency, we recognize the danger in the tendency of our 
times to interpret efficiency too exclusively in terms of 
mere achievement. We are in danger of losing sight of 
the personality of the educated man and woman. Our 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 305 

educational efforts are drifting more and more toward 
developing men and women who can do things, rather than 
men and women who are somebody. The mercenary spirit 
of the age is corrupting education as it does everything 
else. To get things done, and to make money through the 
transaction, is the spirit that controls our modern life; 
and this spirit has crept into education. The technical 
schools are drawing the crowds of students today. The 
courses that are elected in our colleges and universities 
are those of the applied sciences, or those courses that tend 
to increase the student's capacity to gain material ad- 
vantage in the struggle of life and to make money, rather 
than the courses that tend to increase his capacity to 
serve humanity. In these respects it may be argued 
that our modern education is irreligious and unchristian, 
and that it is furthering the interests of the kingdom of 
Mammon rather than the interests of the kingdom of 
God. 

But whatever may be said about the present tendency 
in education, the fault is not with the idea or principle 
of popular education, nor with the organization that is 
serving its purpose. The fault is with the mercenary 
spirit of our times, which has been corrupting everything, 
— the home and the church, government and education. 
Our hope is grounded in the plain fact that the spirit and 
purpose of popular education is Christian. The institu- 
tion rests upon the kingdom-foundation. The organiza- 
tion that serves the cause of popular education in a 
democratic state is controlled by the spirit of the kingdom 
of God. Our public schools seek the welfare of all 
citizens regardless of race, or class, or sex. Our public 
schools are the best examples we have of socialized 
property, and of socialized service. They do not belong 
to any particular class for their special benefit. They 
belong to all of us. They exist for the welfare of each 
one of us. We look at them with just pride and say: 
^'Our schools." They are built and maintained by com- 



306 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

mon funds. They are supported by a system of taxation, 
which, in theory, requires from each individual according 
to his ability for the good of all. 

It is the purpose of the schools to develop the highest 
possible efficiency, not for their own sate, nor to make 
money for a few school promoters, but solely for the good 
of all the citizens. And this is strictly in accord with the 
kingdom of God. Anything that exalts social service 
above private interests is of the spirit of the kingdom of 
God. We build substantial school houses and equip them 
as well as we are able. We make an effort to secure teach- 
ers who have prepared themselves for service. And all 
this is done, not with the pagan idea of making money for 
any particular class, but for the welfare of all the people. 
Neither color nor sex, neither poverty nor wealth, nor any 
other condition, can debar the normal child of an Ameri- 
can citizen from the public schools. All that the public 
schools have to offer is placed at the disposal of any child 
that will avail itself of the opportunity. This is in strict 
accord with the fundamental principles of the kingdom of 
God as I understand them. The fact that the actual re- 
sults of our public school work are not up to the standard 
that we may desire, — or the fact that there may be graft 
connected with the running of certain schools, — is not the 
fault of the institution of popular education, but of cer- 
tain pagan elements that have entrenched themselves in 
our social order. The thing that we rejoice over is the 
fact that the institution of popular education is so sound 
at heart. The spirit that animates it is the identical spirit 
that we have discovered in the prophetic conception of the 
kingdom of God. I question whether there is any other 
single thing in our social life that is quite so Christian as 
the idea and the practice of popular education. 

In the field of education the progress of the democratic 
spirit has been just as marked as in the field of govern- 
ment. There has been a gradual evolution from those dark 
days when the privilege of education was deliberately 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 307 

denied to the masses, to the present day when the doors of 
our public schools are open to the children of all citizens 
regardless of the accidents of their birth. Throughout the 
ancient world, the masses, — those who were supposed to 
have been bom to grind and toil, — were systematically 
denied access to the means of mental culture. They were 
purposely denied access to the only means by which they 
could rise from their state of social degradation and mis- 
ery. Enforced ignorance was one of the means by which 
their complete subjection was accomplished. In the Ro- 
man empire, in its best days, the masses had no school 
privileges at all. The sons of the upper class Romans were 
educated under private tutors, or in private schools, and 
often at great expense ; but the lower classes, and all the 
women, were kept ^'neighbor to the ox," During the Mid- 
dle Ages, and far on into the modern period, the privileges 
of education were monopolized by the upper classes for 
their own selfish benefit, just as they had always done and 
are still doing with the other good things of life wherever 
the democratic spirit has not curbed their power. In many 
sections of the world to-day, where the influence of Western 
civilization has not yet made itself felt, the poor in general, 
and women in particular, are denied their divine right to 
an education. In Europe and Asia, until only a few cen- 
turies ago, women were not granted the privilege of even 
the rudiments of education. And even here in America, 
'^the land of the free and the home of the brave," women, 
until a generation ago, were denied the opportunity of 
higher education. Three quarters of a century ago the 
doors of every college in America were barred against our 
sisters. E^ot one college in the country would admit a 
woman to a single course or privilege. 

The kingdom of God has been coming as adequate oppor- 
tunities for education have been given to all classes of 
society. We may say: lo, here, the kingdom is coming, 
wherever adequate school privileges are given to all citi- 
zens, rich or poor, male or female, white or black, native 



308 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

or alien. Wherever the human mind, which is endowed 
with the power ^^to think the thoughts of the Creator after 
Him/' is cultivated, lo, there, the kingdom is coming. 
And especially has the kingdom been coming in the degree 
that woman has been given the opportunity of an educa- 
tion on an equality with man. Anything that elevates 
woman, who has very clearly shown herself to be man's 
mental equal, and in many respects his moral superior, 
hastens the coming of the kingdom of God. The educated 
woman in the home, and her advent into the different 
spheres of public life, will prove one of the most potent 
factors in the building of a better world. 

One of the most damaging charges against the Catholic 
church is that she has frequently blocked the way of pop- 
ular education. She did so not only during the dark 
period of the Middle Ages, but also in the twentieth cen- 
tury, in Russia, in Latin America, and elsewhere, where 
the democratic spirit has not yet curbed her autocratic 
power. She has done so in the interest of her static system 
of theology and her autocratic methods of government, 
which she knows cannot be maintained in the atmosphere 
of a liberal education. Any institution, whether she calls 
herself divine or by any other high sounding name, that 
checkmates the progress of popular education is an alien 
force in the kingdom of God. 

On the other hand, one of the chief merits of the Prot- 
estant church is that she has always championed the cause 
of popular education. She has been a pioneer in this 
noble work wherever the frontiers of her missions have 
penetrated. N^othing augurs more for the kingdom of 
God at the present time than the organized efforts for a 
closer cooperation between the churches and the public 
schools in the education of our youths. It is through the 
cooperation of the home, the church, and the public schools 
• — particularly the schools — that the type of citizen must 
be developed who will make democracy safe and efficient. 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 309 

III 

the: kingdom of god is coming through the new 
social spirit of our times 

IT was the spirit of a revolutionary individualism that 
was reacting against the enforced cosmopolitanism of 
the old order that gave birth to the new age of the 
sixteenth century. The aim of the Catholic church was 
to establish a central authority that would do the thinking 
and the governing for all mankind. The same religious 
ideas and practices that satisj&ed the people of the seventh 
century were to satisfy the people of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. The identical customs and ideas were to prevail 
from Rome to Paris, and from Paris to London. But the 
Catholic scheme of uniformity was contrary to human 
nature and could not endure. It failed to take cognizance 
of the individualism that is native to human nature. Men 
longed to do their own thinking and their own choosing. 
It was this rising spirit of individualism that brought on 
the new age. But in the new age that was built on the 
wreckage of Medisevalism, individualism ran riot. Indi- 
viduals not only thought for themselves regardless of the 
authority and the opinion of others, but they also lived for 
themselves regardless of the rights of others. Individuals 
and groups of individuals, in defiance of internal compunc- 
tions and of external authority, appropriated the world to 
themselves. Against this extreme individualism, which is 
the result of the abuse of the principle which gave birth to 
the new age of the sixteenth century, there is a reaction 
to-day as keen in its feelings and as conscious of its desires, 
as was the reaction against the external authority and the 
enforced uniformity of the latter part of the Middle Ages. 
The spirit that characterizes our times is that of a social 
idealism in contrast to the individualism of the old order. 
The new social spirit recognizes all the inalienable rights 
and privileges of the individual. It allows the individual 
the fullest liberty of self-determination so long as his lib- 



310 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

erty does not interfere with the rights and the liberties of 
others. The individual is to do his own thinking and 
choosing, but always with a just consideration for the 
rights and the welfare of his fellows. Under the impulse 
of this social idealism a new standard of conduct is shap- 
ing itself. In all our doings, in our private life and in 
our corporate relationships, we are being judged primarily 
by our attitude toward our fellow men. Individuals and 
institutions are being judged by their service to society, 
rather than by their ability to control things and to accum- 
ulate money. Social responsibilities and obligations are 
being recognized as never before. A new sense of sin is 
beginning to grip the conscience of individuals and of in- 
stitutions. The sins that are condemned most universally 
and most severely are those that affect the lives of the 
greatest number of people. In our heart of hearts we^ 
despise the man who steals a million dollars with the 
fingers of his monopoly much more than the man who steals 
a chicken with the fingers of his hands, even if, by a 
strange contradiction, we commit the ragged chicken thief 
to the County jail, while we elect the gentleman thief to 
Congress. Our relation to our fellow menTs^he ethical 
norm by which individuals and institutions are beginning 
to be judged. This restandardization of conduct is one of 
the most wholesome and encouraging signs of the times. 
As has always been the case with the things of the Spirit, 
no one knows exactly whence this new social spirit has 
come, nor whither it is going; but we do know that its 
advent is one of the most unmistakable signs of the pro- 
gress of the kingdom of God. 

Much as we lament the war, which prostrated the world 
with grief and loaded it down with debt, we nevertheless 
rejoice in the fact that it has helped to quicken the social 
conscience of the age, and to stimulate our sense of social 
obligations. The war helped everybody to see and to 
speak about certain important things which some people 
were criticised for seeing and speaking about before. 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 311 

^Never before was the profiteering spirit in individuals 
and in institutions so universally recognized, and so freely 
criticised, as during our brief participation in the v^ar. 
]^ever before was the brutal selfishness which thinks only 
of enriching itself at the expense of the public so severely 
condemned. I^ever before were the evils of class antagon- 
ism, and the wastefulness of class competition, so clearly 
seen and so freely criticised by so many people. For the 
first time in my memory was there anything like a public 
sentiment against the many able-bodied men and women — 
those social parasites — who live on the fat of the land 
without ever doing a stroke of honest work. The war 
also showed the need of widening the scope and of stiffen- 
ing the backbone of government. For the sake of safety 
in the prosecution of the war, certain basic industries were 
taken out of the hands of private parties and were placed 
under the direct control of the government. But if the 
basic industries cannot be considered safe, in times of war, 
in the hands of private parties who operate them for the 
sake of profit for themselves, by what contradictions can 
we consider them safe in their hands in times of peace ? 

It would be a great pity if the many social by-products 
of the war should be left go to waste again. Systematic 
efforts are being made in high places to swing the world 
back into the old ruts in which the war found us. The 
reactionary forces may succeed, for a time, to maintain 
the status quo, because they are still in possession of the 
balance of political power. But as the rising spirit of 
individualism won the victory over the powers that were 
in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, so will the 
spirit of social idealism win the victory over the powers 
that he in the twentieth century. Social evolution may 
be diverted from its course, but it cannot be kept from its 
destiny — the rights of humanity. 

One of the hopeful signs of the times is that the Chris- 
tian church is hearing the call and feeling the impulse of 
the new social spirit. She is catching the social vision. 



312 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

She is being born again of the Social Spirit of the kingdom 
of God. The church was taking her Rip Van Winkle nap 
while epoch-making changes were going on about her. 
But she is waking up and is rubbing the social drowsiness 
from her eyes. Perhaps no one appreciates the change that 
is coming over the church more than those who, fifteen or 
twenty years ago, were criticised for blazing the way over 
which multitudes are travelling now with all the noise 
and display of a street parade. The war served as a refin- 
ing fire for the church. It shocked her into a sense of her 
social shortcomings as no amount of friendly criticism was 
able to do. It helped the thoughtful men of the church, 
both ministers and laymen, to see that our individualistic, 
ritualistic, other-world religion has been entirely too in- 
effective in its inhibitive influence on the mighty onward 
sweep of the world's political and industrial life. The 
world was drifting on to shipwreck on the shoals of 
materialism and mammonism, and the church had created 
scarcely a ripple to prevent the catastrophe. Thoughtful 
people see that the failure was not due to a lack of devo- 
tion or of earnestness on the part of the church, but to the 
lack of social leaven in her message and ministry, and to 
the sectarian divisions which have made of non-effect what 
little social passion our desocialized religion had created. 
The critical self-examination which the war forced upon 
the church, and the penitent confession of her social short- 
comings which she is making, are among the great gains 
of the times. The church's confession of her social short- 
comings will, in certain sections at least, be followed by 
the supplementation of our individualistic religion by the 
social religion of the kingdom of God. 

There are powerful reactionary forces in the church 
just as there are in the state ; and they are making stren- 
uous efforts to swing the church back into the ruts in which 
she was moving for centuries. But in the church, as in 
the state, the reactionary forces will not be able to turn the 
tides of progress backward. The church of to-day is being 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 313 

caught in a current that is as irresistible as that which 
resulted in the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth 
century. An organized attempt to quench the social fire 
that is being kindled in the church, and that is being 
fanned into a blaze by the draught of the larger social con- 
flagration outside of the church, might mean a repetition 
of what happened four hundred years ago. It might 
result in the division of Protestantism into an ultra con- 
servative wing which prefers to pray and to wait till the 
Lord will come from heaven ''to set up his kingdom," and 
a liberal wing that will endeavor to establish, by the ever- 
present Lord's help, the kingdom which he has entrusted 
to us. For the church not to move forward with the on- 
coming tide of social evolution would be a calamity, for 
no other agency in society will be able to give the morale 
to the social movement of the age that the Christian church 
can give it. 

The present unrest in the industrial world is not some- 
thing to be feared, or to be condemned without qualifica- 
tion, much less something to be put down by force ; for this 
too is an evidence of the coming of the kingdom of God 
and of the diverse pathways by which it is coming. This 
"cry from the underworld," as some one has termed it, is, 
in its last analysis, a cry for justice, — for justice which 
has been withheld too long. Our day of social unrest, of 
strikes and boycotts, much as we may dislike the rude 
disturbance of our peace and of our contentment with 
things as they are, is, nevertheless, far in advance of the 
days of Feudal serfdom and of chattel slavery. In those 
days there was no such thing as social unrest, or of organ- 
ized grievance against oppression. Here and there, in the 
long course of history, there was a weak peasant reaction 
against the inhuman conditions that were imposed upon 
them by their masters. But each time the Boorish dis- 
turbance of the peace was brought to a speedy termination 
by the masters who held all the political and the military 
power in their o^vn hands. On the whole, the enslaved 



314 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

masses, all through history, were a patient, long-suffering 
herd. They did not recognize their divine rights as human 
beings. They themselves believed the inhuman doctrine, 
manufactured by their masters, that a few were bom to 
rule, and to enjoy the good things of life, and that all the 
rest were born to toil and to slave. Under the socially 
enervating influence of this ungodly doctrine, the toiling 
masses, like their companions in misery, the dogs, were 
content with the crumbs which fell from the masters' 
tables. 

But things are different to-day. Popular education has 
brought a little of the light of the kingdom of God into 
the souls of the class whose ancestors were enslaved for 
many generations. The present howling of the mob for 
their rights, — a howling which is often inflamed and mis- 
directed by their leaders, and which is frequently defiant 
in spirit and usually materialistic in its aims, is neverthe- 
less the result of the kingdom-life that is germinating in 
the under-stratum of their developing manhood. If we 
wish to understand the present social unrest throughout the 
world we must, on the one hand, recognize the hard condi- 
tions under which the laboring class has been obliged to 
live for a full ^yq thousand years; and we must, on the 
other hand, appreciate the fact that we have been educat- 
ing the present generation of laborers sufficiently to see the 
wrongs which their class has suffered all through the ages. 
The present social unrest is not only a reaction against the 
wrongs which this generation of working people is suffer- 
ing, but against the fact that their class has been exploited 
since the days when the masses of Egypt became dis- 
possessed of everything but their bodies. We can exploit 
an ignorant people; but we cannot educate them and con- 
tinue to exploit them. This is precisely the condition as 
it confronts us to-day. Popular education and the exploita- 
tion of the masses by the classes cannot continue together. 

The kingdom of God is coming through every legitimate 
measure that aims to secure justice and their inalienable 



Evidence That the Kingdom Has Been Coming 315 

rights for the great host of the world's toilers. They are 
not beasts of burden, but our brothers, — children of the 
same God whom we have called : Our Father. Socialism, 
perhaps even Bolshevism, like the Assyrian and the Baby- 
lonian in the days of the prophets, may be an instrument 
in the hands of the Lord God to chastise an unjust indus- 
trial system, a conniving state, and an indifferent church. 
Socialism, in its last analysis, is an intense passion for 
that justice which has been denied the masses all through 
history. The unfortunate thing about it is that it struts 
around in a materialistic and atheistic garb. To its 
materialism and its atheism we are firmly opposed, and 
must continue to be so. With its theory of industrial 
organization we may or we may not agree. But with its 
passion for justice for those to whom justice has been 
denied we cannot help but show our active sympathy if 
the spirit of the kingdom of God has possession of our 
hearts. Against the encouragement of violence on the part 
of some of the social radicals we must not fail to use our 
influence, for in this they are an obstruction in the way of 
real and lasting progress. The kingdom of God cannot 
be taken by violence. But with every legitimate protest 
against the exploitation of ouq class of human beings by 
another class, and with every legitimate move for justice 
for all classes of men, we must not fail to show our active 
interest; for these things are harbingers of the coming of 
the day of God. It is a hopeful sign when human beings 
show their dissatisfaction with things that are inhuman. 
It is a hopeful sign when human beings are no longer 
willing to be beasts of burden for others. 

The kingdom of God has been coming, and it will con- 
tinue to come, in and through every legitimate movement 
to establish the brotherhood world — a world of justice, of 
mercy, and of unselfish cooperation in the interest of the 
highest and fullest life for all mankind. The kingdom 
was slowly coming in the centuries of the past, and it will 
continue to come with quicker pace and in fuller measure 



316 The Church and the Ever-Coming Kingdom of God 

in the centuries of the future. One of the encouraging 
things is the fact that the kingdom of God has not 
depended upon any one institution or influence in the past, 
neither will it in the future. It is higher and broader 
and deeper than all our temporary institutions. Organ- 
izations and institutions will pass away, but the kingdom 
of God will continue to come, for its principles are rooted 
deep in the moral texture of the universe. Its ideals and 
motives appeal to that which is best and most enduring in 
mankind. Slowly, painfully, and with much strife and 
confusion, humanity has been climbing the steep ascent to 
that City of Righteousness which the great prophets have 
seen afar oif in their dreams of justice and brotherhood — 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD OIST EARTH, built by the 
hand of man moved by the Spirit of God. Then : 

"Keep heart, Comrade; God may be delayed 

By evil, but He suffers no defeat; 

Even as a chance rock in an upland brook 

May change a river's course; and yet no rock — 

No, nor the baffling mountains of the world — 

Can hold it from its destiny the sea. 

God is not foiled; the drift of the World Will 

Is stronger than all wrong. Earth and her years, 

Down joy's bright way, or sorrow's long road, 

Are moving toward the purpose of the Skies." 



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